Thames Water will not pledge money towards an £180million investment fund that the Government wants to use to tackle sewage spills.
The new initiative was announced on Monday as part of the Department for Food, Environment and Rural Affairs (Defra)’s effort to prevent more than 8,000 spills across the UK.
The scheme is supposed to fund “more cutting-edge technology, including artificial intelligence, and more specialist staff”.
Water company Anglian Water has pledged £50million, Severn Trent £42million, United Utilities £39million, Southern £10million, and Wessex £8million.
But Thames Water, responsible for water supply and waste water treatment in most of Greater London, said it could not offer any investment.
A spokesperson said: “We take the pollution reduction extremely seriously and are keen to ensure we reduce these significantly but are not able to offer the further acceleration in investment that has been asked for at this stage.”
They added that it has been “the first company to say publicly that untreated discharges are unacceptable” and said it has previously contributed to the £4.5billion Thames Tideway Tunnel.
Defra told The Standard it is “dissapointed” by the firm’s decision and wants the company “to go further and faster to reduce pollution incidents”.
Thames Water has faced controversy over sewage spills, with the amount of sewage left to flow into the Thames in 2023 almost five times more than the previous year.
Between April and December 2023, Thames Water released sewage into London's waterways for 6,590 hours, 11 minutes and 54 seconds.
In just six days, between December 25 and December 31, 2023, sewage was dumped across the Thames Water network for 128 hours and 12 minutes – this is equivalent to 18 hours every day.
These figures, which came out in January, are based on City Hall analysis of published Thames Water data, which monitors discharge from 118 sites across the network.
They prompted London Mayor Sadiq Khan to send a letter to new Thames Water CEO Chris Weston, saying “the state of our rivers is an appalling advert for privatisation”.
“London’s rivers hold a special place in the hearts of those of us lucky enough to call this city home,” he added.
At the time, Thames Water stressed that 2022 was a drought year, meaning its sewage treatment works were less affected than they were during the wet weather in 2023.
The firm said: “Storm overflows are designed to operate automatically when the sewer network is about to be overwhelmed which then releases diluted wastewater into rivers, rather than letting it back up into people’s homes.
"We are working hard to make these discharges unnecessary.”
