‘OUR plan is working’, says South West Water as its announces pollution incidents halved in the first half of 2025.

Thanks to the ‘brilliant efforts’ of its teams, the water company is building on its progress from 2024, where it was one of a handful of companies to reduce the number of pollution incidents.

South West Water’s focus has been two fold.

Firstly, reducing pollutions to homes, businesses and land.

As a result, internal sewer flooding to homes and businesses has reduced by 68 per cent in the past five years.

External sewer floodings have also fallen by 24 per cent since 2020.

Across the South West, homes and businesses are now less likely to experience flooding than in any other part of the UK.

South West Water says it is focused on reducing the use of storm overflows at beaches, with a 20 per cent reduction in bathing water spills over the last five years.

As result of multi-million-pound investment, 100 percent of South West Water’s 1,342 storm overflows are now fitted with Event Duration Monitors which record data at least every 15 minutes, with some sites capturing updates every two minutes and others as often as every ten seconds.

Richard Price, Managing Director of Wastewater Services at South West Water, said: ‘Our plan is working.

‘We are one of the few water companies to reduce our number of incidents last year and in the first half of 2025, we have more than halved pollution incidents compared to the same period in 2024.

‘We know we need to do more to fight the impact of climate change, and make our infrastructure future proofed to reduce the impact on homes, businesses and our region and that’s why we’re investing a record £760m in storm overflows alone over the next 5 years.

‘No-one wants to improve our performance more than the 4,000 brilliant colleagues who live and work in the regions we support’.