Cornwall Council calls time on South West Water

Cornwall’s town halls have been building towards this for months, and now the county’s own council has joined them. Cornwall Council has passed a statement of no confidence in South West Water and called for the company to be taken back into public ownership, backing a grassroots campaign that has swept through more than 60 town and parish councils.

The vote passed unanimously, with only two abstentions.

A county speaking with one voice

The result is the high point so far of the Dowr Glan (Clean Water) campaign, which has seen local councils across Cornwall pass their own votes of no confidence and call for the privatised utility to be brought under public control. Before Cornwall Council debated its motion, campaigners handed a letter signed by those councils to the Leader of Cornwall Council and the council’s chief executive, with several Cornish MPs looking on.

The councils backing the campaign represent well over half of Cornwall’s population and include all of its largest towns, from Bude to Penzance.

Mael Garrec, Mebyon Kernow town councillor for Penryn and the town’s Deputy Mayor, has coordinated the cross-party effort. “Yesterday, Cornwall spoke with one voice, and its message to Andy Burnham and his new government could not have been clearer,” he said. “Cornwall is sick of South West Water, in many cases all too literally.”

“This is a huge win for Cornwall’s environment, and for all the councillors, residents and campaigners who have been working so hard for the last few months to make it happen. But it’s not the end of the story, we will be keeping the momentum going till we see real action from government.”

Mael added: “We intend to hold Mr Burnham to his promise to take public services back under public control, and there is no better place to start than with South West Water. This company has quite simply lost its social licence to operate in Cornwall.”

📷Dowr Glan campaigners at Cornwall Council

What the motion says

The motion was proposed by Cllr Loveday Jenkin of Mebyon Kernow and seconded by Cllr Dean Evans of the Green Party. It notes “with grave concern the systemic failure of South West Water (SWW) to manage the sewage system in Cornwall,” and warns that “despite record bills and government intervention, raw sewage continues to impact our environment and public health”.

Alongside the no-confidence declaration, the council resolved to instruct its Leader to petition the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the Chief Executive of the regulator Ofwat to transfer ownership and management of the company to a publicly owned organisation, run as a public service. The full text of the motion asks government to consider a public benefit company model, under which surpluses are reinvested into infrastructure rather than paid out as dividends, and to publish the legal route, timetable and financial implications of any transfer.

The motion also calls on South West Water to set up a publicly accessible Cornwall Water Performance Dashboard within three months, updated at least monthly, so residents can track storm overflow discharges, discharge frequency and duration, and progress against investment commitments across different parts of Cornwall.

📷Local councillors and campaigners hand letter to Leader of Cornwall Council with 3 MPs in attendance

The figures behind the vote

Dowr Glan has published its own compilation of facts and figures on the company’s record, drawing on the regulators. According to those figures, South West Water discharged untreated sewage for 407,006 hours in 2025, the most of any UK water company and part of a national total of around 1.9 million hours.

The same compilation points to hundreds of hours of dry-day spills at popular Cornish beaches last year, including 661 hours at Portreath and 391 hours at Pentewan, both rated “Excellent” for bathing water, and close to 1,000 hours from three South West Water sites on the River Carnon. It cites an Ofwat finding from 2025 that just over half of the company’s wastewater treatment works have storm overflows that spill regularly, a problem the regulator called systemic and dating back to at least 2017, and notes that the Environment Agency has rated the company’s environmental performance “red”, its lowest, for 14 years running.

The campaign sets that record against the company’s finances. It says the average household water bill in the region rose to £686 in 2025, up from £520, while the chief executive’s pay package reached £803,000 and Pennon, South West Water’s parent group, reported £65.9 million in pre-tax profit for the first half of 2025/26. The campaign also points to a 2024 cryptosporidium outbreak linked to the water supply in Brixham, in the company’s Devon patch, which left more than 140 people ill and four in hospital.

Support across the political divide

Councillors from across the political spectrum spoke in favour, many describing how constituents had suffered from failing infrastructure and sewage pollution, with effects reaching from public health to the supply of affordable housing with adequate water and sewerage. Several, including Council Leader Leigh Frost, said the company’s repeated promises to improve had not produced substantial change.

Loveday Jenkin said the motion “has harnessed the frustration that people all across Cornwall are feeling. It recognises that this stems from a systemic failure that is built into the privatised model of the water industry.”

“This is not about the people who work on the ground for South West Water, doing what they can to the best of their ability within a broken system,” she added. “It’s about the need for a complete change to the way water and sewerage are managed. People need to be able to trust that these vital services are being run for the common good and for our environment, not for private profit.”

Dean Evans focused on where the money goes. “We want to see the money we fork out on our water bills spent on desperately needed infrastructure rather than on shareholder dividends and executive bonuses,” he said.

“Water industry lobbyists maintain that taking these companies into public ownership would be too expensive. But the public have been paying a very high price for decades of institutional failure and environmental harm. Many experts have said it’s perfectly possible to take these utilities back into public hands without further rewarding the same people who have been profiting from this failure.”

📷Campaigners and councillors

MPs and what happens next

The Dowr Glan letter, now backed by Cornwall Council, will be delivered to DEFRA, the Chief Executive of Ofwat, and all six of Cornwall’s MPs. Campaigners expect more town and parish councils to sign on over the next ten days.

Three of Cornwall’s six MPs spoke to campaigners outside Cornwall Council before the debate: Andrew George (Liberal Democrats, St Ives), Jayne Kirkham (Labour, Truro & Falmouth), and Perran Moon (Labour, Camborne & Redruth). All three said they supported the motion’s aims and promised to work towards fundamental reform of the water industry.

Tom Scott, a Dowr Glan campaigner and Coordinator of Cornwall Green Party, said it was good to hear that MPs were getting the message. “People in Cornwall will be waiting to see whether these supportive words will be matched with the sort of decisive government action that is so long overdue.”

📷Campaigners and councillors at Cornwall Council