South West Water fined £7.9m as MP calls for tougher penalties

Plymouth Magistrates’ Court has handed South West Water the largest fine ever imposed for environmental offences in the region. At its heart are hundreds of sewage spills at some of North Cornwall’s best-known spots.

A record fine for Cornwall and Devon

South West Water was fined £7,867,733 at Plymouth Magistrates’ Court on Tuesday 29 September 2026, in a case brought by the Environment Agency. The company was also ordered to pay £329,993 in costs and a £120 victim surcharge, and has 56 days to pay.

The company had pleaded guilty at earlier hearings to 18 charges. Seventeen were for illegal water discharge activities and one was for failing to take reasonable remedial measures after a failure at a pumping station. The offences took place between January 2015 and July 2021 in Bodmin, Harlyn, Playing Place, Polperro and Plymouth.

According to the Environment Agency, District Judge Matson repeatedly found that the company’s conduct amounted to reckless failures in management systems and in its response to known risks.

Harlyn, Bodmin and Polperro

On 231 occasions between January 2016 and July 2021, untreated sewage was discharged onto Harlyn beach.

At South West Water’s sewage works near Bodmin, there were 336 illegal spills in the seven years to March 2020. The judge said of this site: “I find the fact that such a large amount of spills were not picked up on by South West Water to be significant and incredibly concerning.”

At Polperro Harbour on 24 August 2019, “untreated sewage gushed through the harbour wall on a bank holiday weekend”. The company took 10 hours to attend despite alarms going off, and was fined £1.1 million for that single incident.

In Plymouth, a combined sewer entering Budshead Creek in the Whitleigh area collapsed in 2020 after years of formal warnings from the Environment Agency, leading to two pollution incidents that August and September.

The breakdown by location

Figures shared by the office of North Cornwall MP Ben Maguire break the fines down as follows:

• Harlyn: £2,958,120
• Nanstallon: £2,689,200
• Bodmin: £202,800
• Polperro: £1,120,500
• Halvarras: £351,000
• Hooe Lake: £216,000

What the judge and Environment Agency said

District Judge Matson said that “incidents of pollution will not be tolerated”. The judge quoted the company’s own mantra that “one pollution is too many” and said it needed to carry that forward “to ensure that horrendous, very significant incidents of pollution such as these never happen again”.

The court also found that, despite pleading guilty, the company had tried to minimise its role in the offending.

Clarissa Newell, Area Environment Manager at the Environment Agency, said: “Hundreds of pollution incidents occurred at some of the most scenic locations in Cornwall and Devon, including bathing waters, a designated Special Area of Conservation and a priority habitat.”

“We hope this record fine will influence a new approach for South West Water, where protecting the environment takes priority in spending decisions.”

Environment Secretary Angela Eagle said: “This sentence sends a clear message: if water companies wilfully ignore their obligations, they will face the full consequences of their actions.”

North Cornwall MP calls for prison sentences

Ben Maguire, the Liberal Democrat MP for North Cornwall, has raised sewage dumping in Parliament many times. He is calling for tougher penalties for repeat offenders, including prison sentences for those responsible for overseeing serious and illegal sewage dumping.

“A fine of almost £8 million for a company like South West Water, or its parent company Pennon Group, is nowhere near enough to provide the actual accountability that my constituents deserve,” he said, describing it as “essentially another slap on the wrist fine, which a company of this size can absorb as simply the cost of doing business.”

“The message must be absolutely clear: you CANNOT pollute our waterways and just pay your way out of it. My constituents are sick to death of it.”

South West Water was previously prosecuted in 2023 for 13 charges and fined £2.15m. It has also pleaded guilty to six further charges relating to spills at Holywell Sewage Pumping Station, which will be dealt with at a later date.

📷The Beautiful North Coast of Cornwall captured from the air on a sunny day.