Revealed: The worst areas in Nottinghamshire for sewage spills

The water industry has been under pressure from the public and the Government to clean up its performance after recording almost 400,000 sewage dumping incidents in England and Wales in 2022, totalling 3.3 million hours of pollution pouring into the country’s waterways.

The industry has committed to making changes and earlier this year Water UK, the industry regulator, apologised on behalf of companies for ‘not acting quickly enough’ to tackle sewage spills.

Now, figures sourced from The Rivers Trust which uses official data published by Dŵr Cymru/Welsh Water and the Environment Agency, reveal how much sewage dumping has occured across various parts of the country.

The figures show Ashfield was the worst area in Nottinghamshire with 818 discharges last year, totalling 4,222.1 hours of sewage discharging into the district’s waterways.

Rushcliffe was next worst in Nottinghamshire with 712 discharges, 5,041.8 hours, followed by Newark & Sherwood with 692, 3,986.6 hours, Nottingham with 619 discharges, 1,908.8 hours, then Broxtowe on 570, 2,077.4 hours, Bassetlaw on 556, 3,779.7 hours, Mansfield on 444, 1,159 hours, and finally Gedling on just 262, 260.9 hours.

A Water UK spokesman said: “We recognise more should have been done to address the issue of spillages sooner.

“Over the next seven years water and sewerage companies plan to spend £10 billion in the biggest transformation of our sewers since the Victorian era.”

Across the East Midlands overall there were 31,209 sewage discharges into the region’s rivers with discharges happening for 187,432 hours in total.

Wales was the worst area in the UK with more than 82,000 discharges totalling more than 580,000 hours, while London was the best with 1,809 discharges totalling 6,968 hours.

A Department for Environment, Food & Rural Affairs spokesman said: “Our ambitious Plan for Water sets out the increased investment, tougher enforcement and tighter regulation needed to clean up our waterways.

“We have recently confirmed £1.1 billion in new, accelerated investment to tackle storm overflows.

“We have also set the strictest targets ever on water companies to reduce sewage discharges through our Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan, which will drive the largest infrastructure programme in their history – an estimated £56bn in capital investment over the next 25 years, driving more improvements.”