How sewage in the sea added to electoral storm facing UK Conservatives

The condition of the UK's waterways and beaches has become an important issue for millions of voters in the upcoming general election. 

With water bills expected to rise next year, there are questions about how much companies actually invest in dealing with pollution and waste. At the end of last year, a poll suggested more than half of UK voters were concerned about river pollution, but that leapt to 60 percent in key Conservative parliamentary seats.

Clean water campaigners in the south of England are determined to kick as many Conservative members of parliament (MPs) as possible out of parliament. One MP at risk is Caroline Ansell who represents Eastbourne & Willington and has a majority of 4,331. 

Eastbourne is a resort town on England's southeast coast, popular with holidaymakers and wild swimmers who enjoy a bracing dip in the English Channel. Yet that's becoming increasingly difficult due to storm overflows being used repeatedly by private water company Southern Water to discharge a mixture of rainwater and raw sewage into the sea during heavy rainfall. 

The policy is supposed to be used in emergencies to relieve pressure on the system. But Southern Water was fined £90 million ($114 million) in 2021 after admitting thousands of illegal discharges of sewage which polluted rivers and coastal waters across the counties of Sussex, Kent, and Hampshire.

Many local customers are angry, including Carolyn Heaps who founded women-only sea swimming group Silver Dippers during the 2020 Covid lockdown. Along with up to 40 friends, she takes the plunge four or five times a week and regularly monitors her Surfers Against Sewage app before setting off. She's been forced to cancel many dips at Eastbourne's Holywell beach due to sewage discharges.

Heaps told CGTN: "I'm more aware now that when we go to swim, if it's been a very rainy day or two, we know it's going to be a big red cross on the app and all our plans are put on hold until that green tick comes. It's very annoying."

Former Liberal Democrat councilor Heaps is among those residents campaigning against Southern Water, with some residents refusing to pay a percentage of their water bills.

According to Heaps: "If we don't fight this sort of thing, we'll get what we deserve. And that will be rubbish waterworks and sewage in all our streams and rivers."

She added: "Water is a vital resource. We need to look after it. The trouble with Britain at the moment, it's in such a mess. Every single area you think of - the judiciary, the police, education, NHS, the armed forces, they've all been so underfunded. Everything is on its knees."

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Distributing clean water and getting rid of wastewater has been a privatized business in many parts of the UK since deregulation introduced in 1989 by then Conservative Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher. 

In the Eastbourne region and beyond, Southern Water is the company with the contract. It's been reported that despite the firm's poor record, it hopes to increase water bills in the next five years by up to 91 per cent.  

Tens of thousands of voters in dozens of parliamentary constituencies blame water companies, regulators and the government for not stopping sewage pollution in recent years. Throughout England last year, almost half a million sewage spills were recorded - an increase of 54 percent from the previous year. 

In one notorious case in May, dozens of people were taken ill with cryptosporidiosis, an illness causing diarrhea, in south Devon, leading to another water company, South West Water, advising residents to boil their tap water.

Voters in Eastbourne are among many nation-wide who are unhappy with the water companies. One elderly man told CGTN: "They sort of say 'oh, everything's fine.' And yet there's thousands of hours of sewage going into the sea, which can't be good."

An older woman we spoke to agreed, predicting "I think a lot of people will change the way they vote." 

Against the tide

More than a quarter of the population on this stretch of coast is aged 65 or over, in a region which is more affluent than many others in Britain. But after 14 years and five Conservative prime ministers, there's despair at failing public services.

Ten miles down the coast in Seaford, Tony Stevenson is a member of the Dirty Water Campaign. "Along here we've got a number of CSOs - combined sewer outfalls - which are used when it's particularly bad."

Stevenson listed several nearby coastal towns that have been affected, including Newhaven, Peacehaven, Eastbourne and Hastings." "You can see it and smell it and it's unhealthy," he complained. "It washes up along the coast and makes bathing, kayaking and those watersports which people love to do around here dangerous. It's a health hazard. You've only got to read the reports of people who have been caught there feeling sick, diarrha or worse."

No commitment to renationalization

The opposition Liberal Democrat party and the larger Labour Party have predictably made hay with the issue. Labour, pronouncing that "Britain's waterways have become an open sewer thanks to the Tories' hands-off approach."

If elected as opinion polls suggest, the party says "water bosses who oversee repeated law-breaking will face criminal charges," while the practice of water companies self-monitoring wastewater would end. 

But Labour has made no commitment to an eye-wateringly expensive policy that many campaigners demand - the renationalization of water. It's largely been left to campaigner and former pop singer Feargal Sharkey to hold the government to account. 

During the current election campaign, the ruling Conservatives insisted they were committed to tackle the issue of sewage release. The party said it would work with regulators at the Water Services Regulation Authority (Ofwat) to further hold companies to account, including banning executive bonuses if a company has committed a serious criminal breach. 

But amid accusations that such commitments are too little too late, many voters have already decided to punish the government in a shifting political tide.

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