Shocking figures show that on average United Utilities discharged raw sewage every 6 minutes, devastating the North West’s tourism and leisure hotspots

Debris in the River Mersey.

Leisure and tourism spots across the North West are being devastated by 253 years-worth of raw sewage discharge, Labour Party analysis has found. 

Analysis of Environment Agency figures obtained under Freedom of Information requests by the party, shows that since 2018, raw sewage has been pumped into the North West’s natural environment for a total of 2,219,418 hours. 

Areas impacted include popular tourist and bathing spots such as rivers, lakes, and beaches – spoiling areas of natural beauty and risking public health.  

Cumulatively, this equates to a duration of 92475 days or 253 years of sewage discharge taking place across the North West and polluting its environment, a damning indictment of 12 years of Tory failure to hold water bosses to account. 

The data also points to a 62% increase in the number of monitored discharge hours, between 2018 and 2021. This highlights that the situation is only drastically worsening under the Tories, and a consequence of their two-thirds budgetary cut to the Environment Agency grant, which covers environmental surveillance and enforcement. 

The full scale of the pollution is likely to be even greater, given that Event Duration Monitoring does not cover every permitted storm overflow. 

Labour Party analysis also shows that between 2018 and 2021, there were 358,637 spill events into the North West’s waters. This equates to a shocking average of a sewage spill taking place every 6 minutes over a 3-year period. 

This comes amid revelations that the zombie Tory government shelved sewage discharge reduction plans at the beginning of August – but has since u-turned due to mounting public pressure.