‘Record’ fine imposed on polluter is just 0.3% of pre-tax profits

The record fine imposed on South West Water for pumping sewage into rivers amounts to just 0.3 per cent of the company’s pre-tax profits. That’s a smaller percentage of annual income than a littering fine would be for the average UK earner.

Courts will “no longer tolerate” water pollution, District Judge Joanna Matson told SWW as she imposed a £2.1 million fee on the provider following years of environmental breaches. It might sound like a high price to pay. But is it really?

According to campaign group River Action, South West Water made pre-tax profits of £702.4 million between 2016 and 2020. The fine is equivalent to 0.3 percent of those profits.

How much do South West Water have to pay?

SWW mismanagement and water pollution caused “significant environmental damage,” the court said.

Incidents include pumping sewage into a local river for more than 35 hours, killing thousands of fish with an accidental chemical spill, and allowing E.coli levels to spike 2,000 times higher than the ‘poor’ rating at a local beach. 

But in terms of ratio to income, this penalty is less severe than the fines imposed on ordinary people for littering. 0.3 per cent of the average UK salary – £28,000 per year – is £84. But If police saw you drop a bit of rubbish, you could be fined £150, roughly 0.53 percent of the annual UK salary.

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A fine may stop a serial litterbug from dropping trash. But it’s unclear whether the fine imposed on South West Water will make a meaningful difference, says Amy Slack, Campaigns Manager, River Action.

“Today South West Water have been held to account for illegal discharges and blatant ecocide. But fines must be meaningful and have a nasty sting in the tail to be impactful,” she warns.

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Campaigners have questioned whether the fee would be directed to the right place.

 “The money will be lost in the black hole of the treasury rather than restoring the environments that have been destroyed,” Slack said.

“A decade of cuts to environmental regulators has seen the environment agency budgets slashed by 70% leaving them crippled and unable to hold polluters to account.”

River Action network called on the government to increase funding of regulators and to invest penalty revenue into ecological restoration.

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Susan Davy, chief executive of the Pennon Group, which owns SWW, said that the company was “extremely passionate” about the environment.

“Any pollution incident is one too many. These seven isolated incidents that took place between 2016 and 2020 were unacceptable and it’s right that we have been held to account by the EA,” she said.

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