The Marine Conservation Society has announced that it is taking legal action against the UK Government as a result of what it describes as “their failure to address the sewage pollution scandal facing English shores.”

The Society has now joined the Good Law Project (GLP) as a co-claimant in the GLP’s legal case to protect coastal waters from sewage dumping. The Society is joining the Project in challenging the Government’s Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan, which gives water firms until 2050 to invest in and improve sewers to prevent them from overflowing into waterways and coastlines.

The GLP launched legal action, alongside Essex seafood business Richard Haward’s Oysters and surfer and activist, Hugo Tagholm, to compel the Government to rewrite its plan and significantly bring forward the deadlines it has given to water companies to take decisive action..

Research by the MCS shows that there are 1,651 storm overflows within 1km of a Marine Protected Area (MPA) in England, which spilt sewage into the sea for 263,654 hours in 2021.

CEO Sandy Luk said the environmental organisation is suing the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for not taking effective action on sewage pollution entering UK seas and that the MCS had “not taken this step lightly.”

According to the MCS "we are seeing the physical impacts of this pollution on our beaches" - between 2015 and 2020 the MCS found an average of 38 sewage-related items polluting every 100 metres of beach cleaned in England. At its flagship Great British Beach Clean in September this year, it also found some form of sewage related pollution on 73% of the beaches surveyed in England.

The Society said that it had been hopeful when the Department for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) recognised the issue in August and published its new ‘Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan’ for England.

However, according the MCS Defra’s Plan “ignores the evidence and fails to offer a solution to the issue of sewage spills from storm overflows”, pointing out that it “virtually excludes most coastal waters (except for bathing waters) either directly or indirectly, with some types of marine protected areas and shellfish waters totally excluded.”

“This means around 600 storm overflows are not covered by the Plan and will continue to – completely legally - be able to dump uncontrolled amounts of sewage directly into English seas and beaches,” the MCS said.

It also warns that the proposed time frames lack all urgency - with long-stop targets set for 2050, and the earliest, most urgent targets not to be met until 2035. In addition, there are no targets to implement upstream solutions or to stop harmful pollutants, including chemicals and microplastics at source.

The Society said it had raised these issues and proposed solutions back in March in its response to DEFRA’s consultation on the plan – however, the plan has not been amended since the consultation.

The Society also went to meet DEFRA in early August to draw their attention to the urgency of the issues and recommend strong action. MCS goes on to comment:

“We were told that storm overflows don’t impact estuaries and coastal waters because the sea dilutes the sewage that has been discharged. A ridiculous statement showing either a complete lack of understanding of the impact of the cocktail of plastics, chemicals and pathogens in raw sewage on marine life, or a complete disregard and disrespect for the importance of that marine life.”

MCS subsequently wrote an open letter to DEFRA to highlight its concerns and ensure more transparency on the impacts of the Plan on coastal communities - to date, the MCS has had no response to the open letter.

The Society has described bringing legal action to challenge DEFRA's Plan and to ask the courts to order DEFRA to strengthen it as a step of last resort.

The GLP has also been involved in discussions with others impacted by the Government’s plan, who may also join the co-claimants later on.

The not for profit campaign organisation that uses the law for a better world considers that the Government’s new ‘Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan’ for England is insufficient to meet the Secretary of State’s legal obligations, on three grounds:

• The plan fails to discharge the Secretary of State’s legal duty under the Water Industry Act (1991), as amended by the Environment Act (2021).

• The plan breaches various rights under the European Convention on Human Rights and is unlawful under the Human Rights Act (1998).

• The plan is contrary to the Public Trust Doctrine, which provides ancient common law rights for people to fish, gather food and navigate our shared waters. The Public Trust Doctrine is built upon the principle that the state has a fiduciary duty to safeguard vital natural resources for the benefit of both current and future generations.

The Good Law Project set out its objections to the plan in writing in a detailed letter to the Secretary of State at Defra in accordance with the Pre-action Protocol for the proposed Judicial Review of the Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan under the Civil Procedure Rules.

Click here to download the GLP’s Pre-action Protocol letter.