Scottish Water has published annual overflow event data for 2025 from over 1000 additional monitored locations across Scotland, delivering the next stage of its commitment to make more information on wastewater overflows publicly available.
More than 2,000 locations are now shown on Scottish Water's near real-time overflow map.
The publication expands on the number of locations monitored, giving communities across Scotland access to data on how overflows have operated during 2025. The number of recorded overflow events is higher than previous years – as the report reflects the much larger number of overflows included.
The additional monitors form part of Scottish Water's £500m Improving Urban Waters programme, which is increasing monitoring and transparency, and supporting action to improve the water environment.
The August update means:
- New published data takes the total number of monitors with annual published data available in Scotland from 6% to 30% (1287).
- Over 4.5 times more data locations are now available. It shows four times as many overflow events occurring and less than double the duration of events.
- On average monitored overflows operated 2.5% of the time in 2025.
- Almost 20% did not operate at all during 2025.
The new information will help Scottish Water better understand how rainfall impacts our sewer network and, where needed, make better-informed decisions about where improvements can provide greatest environmental benefit.
Scottish Water will continue adding monitors to its near-real-time map and plans to publish annual 2026 overflow event data for all locations shown on the map in March 2027.
Scottish Water Director of Wastewater Simon Parsons said:
“We made a clear commitment to publish more information about overflows, and with this release of annual data from an additional 1,009 monitored locations, we are giving a much fuller view of how our sewer network is operating.
“It is important to understand that a larger dataset will contain more recorded events. That does not in itself mean overflows are operating more often. It means we are now making information available from many more locations.
“This greater visibility will help us investigate performance, understand where the network may be affecting the environment and target action and investment where it can make the most difference.”
The publication also includes all available overflow events for the additional locations, including shorter-duration events. Previous annual publications generally included overflow events lasting more than 15 minutes and 30 seconds. The more comprehensive approach will apply across all overflows for the publication of 2026 data.
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