2026 Update On The #EndSewagePollution Campaign
Wow. It has been a busy start to the year. We always knew this year was going to be a pivotal year in the campaign to end sewage pollution, so we went into it prepared, but I think even we have been blown away by the tidal wave of support from both the existing and new support in our campaign to end sewage pollution.
Our main focus and the biggest opportunity to transform the water industry in England and Wales comes in the form of the Water Reform Bill which is due to pass through Parliament this year. We are currently in the pre-bill phase of this part of the campaign, where we are doing everything we can to influence the outcome of the Bill before it goes through Parliament. As we saw from the Governments whitepaper published earlier this year, the bill is going to fall wildly short of transforming the water industry (something Labor promised when they were elected in) and will essentially lock us in the same broken privitised water industry where payouts come before people and the planet. And we absolutely cannot let this happen.
So what have we done so far?
We have been busy behind the scenes and working with our communities to build the public mandate for change.
1. Public Consultation
In lieu of a public consultation following the launch of the Government’s Whitepaper, we teamed up with 38 Degrees to launch our own to make sure the public’s views were heard and taken into account. Over 37,000+ took part in this, which has provided us with some powerful data we are now using to demonstrate to Government the weight of public support for radical change.
Key findings:
- 82% said the government was not doing enough to tackle the crisis
- More than half of respondents (52%) said the current proposals will fail to end the scandal and a further 37% said more is needed.
- Only 1% said they believed the plans as they are will help to fix the issue
- 72% said bringing water companies under public ownership would be the single most effective way to improve the sector.
- When asked about how it could affect voting intention, more than half (54%) of respondents indicated that a party’s stance on sewage and water companies would – or likely would influence their vote.
What are we going to do with this?
We have already shared our findings from our own consultation with the Government and will continue to share these findings at every opportunity we get, including at Defra questions and with local MPs. Making sure the public’s views were heard was the reason we did this, so we are prioritising getting these results out whenever we can.
2. Petition
We launched a public petition with 38 degrees off the back of Dirty Business hitting the TV screens, a channel 4 docu drama which lifted the lid on the water industry corruption and focused on the heartbreaking story of Heather Preen who lost her life after contracting E.coli. Our petition is calling on Keir Starmer to end the sewage scandal once and for all. Labour were elected on a pledge to clean up our beaches and river so now they must now deliver. For Heather Preen. For every victim of the sewage crisis. And for every bill-payer forced to foot the cost of this scandal. For more than 30 years water companies have put corporate greed and profit before public health and the environment. Since privatisation, the Government and regulators have looked the other way and let this scandal fester.
We have now hit just over 200K signatures, which is an incredible achievement all thanks to you. This helps us build an unavoidable public mandate for change.
What are we going to do with this?
We are going to hand this petition in to the Government, ensuring every single name on that petition is heard. This will come after our first mass mobilisation moment of the year, the SAS Paddle-Out Protests, so the Government will not be able to ignore us.
3. Political advocacy
The Policy Team at SAS have been doing a huge amount of work behind the scenes to keep the pressure up ahead of the Water Reform Bill, focusing on ownership model options. We cannot be locked into the same old privitsed water industry and so this is our moment to influence real change ahead of a Water Bill being pushed through that transforms nothing. Over the last few weeks we have had meetings with a number of key government officials where we have continued to reinforce our asks and build public mandate for change. There’s been ongoing direct engagement with MPs to discuss future advocacy strategy and build coalition of support around our demands:
- Public health must come first and profit from sewage pollution must end.
- The Government must end the current privatised water industry.
- The Government must take back control of water companies and restructure them, removing the profit motive, to ensure they operate for people and the environment. No option, including public ownership, should be off the table.
We also helped coordinate an open letter to Keir Starmer which was sent from Julie (Heather Preen’s mum) & Reuben (one of the heartbreaking stories shown in the Dirty Business docu drama). This open letter also represented the thousands of others families impacted by sewage pollution and called for a meeting with Keir Starmer to discuss the sewage scandal. So far, we have had no reply.
Finally, we launched an Email your MP action to follow on from the petition. This has now been taken 5,040 times already.
So, what’s next?
All this activity, both the behind-the-scenes advocacy and the public petition and consultation is building up to the rest of our end sewage pollution campaign and water bill work within that.
On 16th May, the UK will take to the water, the shorelines and riverbanks in bigger numbers than ever before for the Paddle Out Protests. SAS’s biggest national day of action will see communities across the UK coming together, united with one demand. To end sewage pollution. Because up and down the UK sewage is STILL being dumped in our waterways, data is missing and we are paying the price. We are sick of it. Sick of the lies, sick of the greed and sick of a system that’s rigged against us.
And this year, we are setting an SAS record.
The Paddle-Out Protests are THE moment to galvanise all water loving communities across the UK to come together to spotlight the current issues in the water industry. Whether that is to highlight the lack of transparency in Scotland and put pressure on newly elected representatives following the elections, spotlighting lack of data in Northern Ireland or shouting about the Water Bill that could change the way the water industry is run in England and Wales.
The Paddle-Out Protests will happen in May, just after devolved elections and just ahead of the Water Bill arriving in Parliament and so provides us the perfect opportunity to show MPs that this is an issue thousands of people care about and how desperately we need a transformation of the water industry across the UK.
See you on the water?