The Government dumps raw sewage on the North East coast every 57 minutes, according to the Labour Party.
Labour said the Conservatives are allowing human sewage to pollute the places in which people live, work and holiday. They claim Tories allowed 1,362 days’ worth of sewage to be dumped into constituencies on the North East coast last year.
The party has identified, through Environment Agency data, how sewage was discharged into coastal areas for 32,686 hours in 2022. They said this is equivalent of there being a non-stop continuous flow of sewage for 44 months.
Labour research also identifies how 9,073 sewage dumping events took place between Middlesbrough and Berwick last year - which equates to a new sewage spill every 57 minutes.
According to data, the area where the most sewage was dumped was Berwick in Northumberland. This was followed by Wansbeck and Stockton North.
The Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) said their new Plan for Water sets out the increased investment, tougher enforcement and tighter regulation to tackle this issue.
Northumbrian Water said improvements and reductions have been made over the course of the year but said there is still more to do and they are "working hard to continue to improve".
Shadow Environment Secretary, MP Jim McMahon, said: "That the Tories have allowed villages, towns, and cities across the country to be treated as open sewers shows that they have no respect for places where people live, work and holiday.
"Communities in the North East should be able to just enjoy the place where they live without having to worry about encountering filthy raw sewage."
Labour analysis previously revealed that a new sewage dumping event has taken place an average of every 2.5 minutes nationally since 2016. They said British waters and open spaces having faced a staggering 1,276 years' worth of raw sewage over just a seven-year period.
At the end of last year, the Labour Party revealed that sewage discharges more than doubled from 14.7 per overflow in 2016 to 35.4 in 2019. They said this coincided with current Environment Secretary Therese Coffey’s decision to cut funding for environmental protection, which came during her tenure as Water Minister.
During the passage of the Environment Bill, Conservative MPs, voted to allow water firms to continue sewage dumping, having blocked a Labour-backed amendment that would have progressively eliminated sewage dumping.
A DEFRA spokesperson said: "This government is the first to take such comprehensive action on storm overflows – and our new Plan for Water sets out the increased investment, tougher enforcement and tighter regulation to tackle this issue.
"We have introduced compulsory monitoring, set the strictest targets ever on water companies to reduce discharges and required them to deliver the largest infrastructure programme in their history.
"The Environment Secretary has demanded an action plan on every storm overflow from every company in England, prioritising those near bathing waters. We are also consulting to give regulators more powers to impose much larger penalties for polluters without needing to go to court."
Labour said a Parliamentary Question tabled by Mr McMahon, revealed that the Conservative Government has failed to conduct any economic assessments of the impact of sewage pollution on tourism trade and businesses.
Last week, the MP for Oldham West and Royton introduced the Water Quality (Sewage Discharge) Bill, which involves legally enforcing four crucial reduction measures.
They are:
- Setting a legal requirement for the monitoring of all sewage outlets and penalties for failures in adhering to monitoring requirements
- Imposing automatic fines for sewage dumping
- Implementing a legally binding target to reduce sewage dumping events
- A requirement for the Secretary of State to publish a strategy for the reduction of sewage discharges and regular economic impact assessments.
Mr McMahon said: "The next Labour Government will build a better Britain, ending the Tory sewage scandal by delivering mandatory monitoring on all sewage outlets, introducing automatic fines for discharges, setting ambitious targets for stopping systematic sewage dumping and ensuring that water bosses are held to account for negligence."
A spokesperson for Northumbrian Water said: "Our 2022 results show notable improvements with reductions in spills and the duration of those discharges, however, we know there is still more to do and are working hard to continue to improve.
"In 2022 we saw reductions of around 20% in spills per overflow and 40% in the average duration of spills. The results also show an increase in the number of overflows that didn’t spill or spilled fewer than 20 times. While this is, in part, the result of the weather and a year with fewer intense storms, it also reflects our investment and focus in this area.
"We understand and share customers’ passion for things to improve further. We are investing more than £80 million towards reducing our reliance on and use of storm overflows between 2020 and 2025.
"We are working with our local communities, and with the rest of the industry and Government, and were involved as part of the Storm Overflow Task Force, to look at how the UK wastewater and drainage infrastructure is designed and the investment needed to work effectively now and in the future.
"In its latest assessment, the Environment Agency awarded our environmental performance Four Stars, the highest rating possible, and we are proud of this and recent industry-leading performance on pollution."
Read next:
