In the largest ever fine imposed for environmental offences in the region, South West Water has been fined more than £7.8 million in a case brought by the Environment Agency for environmental offences across Devon and Cornwall over a six-year period.

Southern Water has been fined £2.4 million in Bromley magistrates’ court after multiple incidents of sewage pollution between 2019 and 2021.

The Administrative Court has today handed down a significant judgment confirming the Environment Agency’s powers to prosecute former employees of Southern Water.

Southern Water has been fined £7.1 million after repeated illegal sewage pollution incidents forced the closure of beaches, harmed coastal communities, with serious failures were exposed in the company’s management of wastewater.

Following South West Water’s admission of 18 separate charges of water pollution across a six year period in Devon and Cornwall and its guilty plea at Plymouth Magistrates Court in March this year, the water firm is expected to be sentenced on 30 July 2026.

South West Water was fined £1.853 million - a record fine for a drinking water offence – at Exeter Magistrates’ Court yesterday and ordered to pay £75,000 following a prosecution by the Drinking Water Inspectorate for drinking water failures.

South West Water will learn whether it faces multi-million pound fines this week in two separate prosecutions brought by the Drinking Water Inspectorate (DWI) and the Environment Agency.

Southern Water has admitted sea pollution incidents off Kent coastline and others inland – the company released sewage into water just weeks after getting a record £90 million fine for almost 7,000 illegal discharges.

Following an Environment Agency investigation, United Utilities has pleaded guilty to introducing thousands of fish into Bessy Brook, near Bolton, without a permit.

 South West Water (SWW) has pleaded guilty to a catalogue of pollution-related charges spanning six years across Devon and Cornwall.