Caroline Robinson,South West and
Kirk England,South West environment and tourism correspondent
BBCSouth West Water (SWW) has been rated “red” for its environmental performance for the 14th year in a row, meaning it is “significantly below target”, the Environment Agency has said.
The company was given two stars out of a possible four in the annual Environmental Performance Assessment report for 2024.
The agency said the water firm had never risen above a two star rating since the assessments began in 2011.
SWW said it was cutting pollution incidents overall through investment in the network but acknowledged “there is more to do”.
‘Responding to failure’
Clarissa Newell, the Environment Agency’s water industry regulation manager for Devon and Cornwall, said the beauty of the region’s coastline brought “both visitors and stress to the water and sewage network”.
“That is a big challenge for South West Water and improvement is within its reach,” she said.
“It needs to get better at building for the future rather than responding to failure.”
Kevin Ward, water company account manager at the Environment Agency, said: “It’s really disappointing to see that South West Water is still struggling to improve their environmental performance, that’s largely because of the overall number of pollutions.
“What I would say with increased regulation and increased investment we are expecting to see that turned around.”
Cutting storm overflows
A spokesperson for SWW said the firm was determined to further improve its environmental performance.
They said storm overflow spills had been cut by nearly 50% year-on-year and pollution incidents had halved in the eight months to August 2025.
“We will continue to accelerate investment in innovation, monitoring, and operational excellence to meet the government target of less than 10 spills per overflow, per year – a whole decade early,” the spokesperson said.
“We are proud to have met our target for self-reporting pollution incidents with our highest ever performance, demonstrating our commitment to transparency.”
Environment Secretary Emma Reynolds said the government was taking action by bringing in new penalties to ban unfair bonuses of water firm executives and introducing a single water regulator.
“We are facing a water system failure that has left our infrastructure crumbling and sewage spilling into our rivers,” she said.
“Under this government, water company inspections and criminal investigations have reached record levels, uncovering the true extent of the problem.”
