Southern Water appeared at Chichester Crown Court yesterday for sentencing following one charge from the Environment Agency of breaching its environmental permits.

The company was fined £160,000 at the hearing, plus £27,000 costs.

The charge relates to an incident on September 1, 2012, when technical problems at the company’s East Worthing Wastewater Treatment Works resulted in an emergency release of untreated wastewater to sea.

Phil Barker, Director of Operations said: “We apologise to any customers or businesses who were affected by the incident at our East Worthing waste water treatment works back in 2012.”

“This is a significant fine but we have already invested over a hundred times that amount over the past three years to improve the site and install back-up systems to help reduce the risk of a future emergency."

“We are disappointed with the verdict but we have a responsibility to our customers and we took the tough decision to make a controlled release of untreated wastewater into the sea to protect homes and the hospital from flooding.”