Southern Water responds following sewage dumps along Sussex coast

At 1pm in St Leonards and Bexhill today, Southern Water pumped sewage into the sea for about 20 minutes at each site.

The firm was behind two other releases at the sites yesterday afternoon at about 3pm — these lasted for more than five hours.

Earlier that same day discharges at the sites lasted more than an hour.

They were not the only beaches to suffer. In Pagham, Littlehampton, Shoreham, Southwick and Hove sewage releases lasted from between 20 minutes to two hours.

In a statement this afternoon, a spokesperson for Southern Water said: “Every day we treat nearly 1,400 million litres of wastewater, to some of the highest regulatory standards in the world. But when there is heavy or prolonged rain, our network has to cope with rainwater run-off from roads, roofs, driveways and hard surfaces.

Storm overflows are there to help protect homes, businesses and schools from flooding. They are effectively a pressure release valve, activated when the system’s capacity is exceeded.

“Storm overflows are regulated and permitted by the Environment Agency. And, while these releases from our network do comprise of some water that has not been fully treated, discharges are typically heavily diluted and made up of 95 per cent or more rainwater.

“We are investing and taking action to reduce the use of storm overflows and lead the way towards creating healthier rivers and seas. We have committed to investing £2 billion over five years to improve our performance. This will help us to reduce 80 per cent of our pollution incidents by 2025 and significantly reduce storm overflows by 2030 by improving our wastewater assets and environmental performance.”