'I dont think we can say we're doing a good job at the moment'
The assessment of the Environment Agency performance by it's own Chair as he appeared before the Environmental Audit Committee this afternoon

The chair and chief executive of Environment Agency are appearing before the Environmental Audit Committee
On water permits Philip Duffy says they have 91 staff trained for inspections and 16,000 installations. Last year there were just 1400 inspections. But there’s plans to increase to 500 inspectors

Testing system to classify if bathing waters are safe to swim legally allows some of the worst results to be excluded
Analysis from ⁦Channel 4 News⁩ shows just 2% of bathing waters account for nearly a quarter of discarded tests
⁦Clare Fallon⁩ channel4.com/news/sewage-wa…

Music and poetry.
Louise Wallwein MBE takes on the lyrics of Taylor Swift new album.
Watch tonight’s piece from Clare Fallon
#TaylorSwift

While looking at Scotland I happened to look into bathing water test results - as you do.
Seems Portobello beach which Visit Scotland describes as 'perfect for swimming'. Last year had 2 Ecoli readings over 3000. That's over 3 times the level which would rate the beach as poor

Welsh Water has also released its sewage spill data showing 916,000 hours in 2023. That's up 68%

corporate.dwrcymru.com/en/community/e…

Scottish Water released its data on sewage releases yesterday. They currently monitor significantly less of their CSO's than England the data does show that one WwTW spilled 1521 times in 2023
That's 4 times a day.

Looking in detail at yesterday's sewage release figures seems Lavant WwTw near Chichester tops the pile.
It released for 6442.31 hours in 2023 -
That's 286 days !
The reason according to Southern Water is 'infiltration'

One of the new areas looking to gain bathing water status is Coniston boating centre. According to figures released yesterday less than a hundred metres away the Coniston Wwtw spilt sewage 178 times for 3389.66 hours last year

Untreated sewage dumped into England rivers and seas doubles in 2023
channel4.com/news/untreated…

Watch the full interview here: channel4.com/news/sharehold…

“Not a penny more of public money should go into these companies.”

Environmental campaigner Feargal Sharkey says shareholders who have “ram-raided” water companies should pay for cleaning up the UK's rivers, lakes and bathing waters.

Over four years since I started covering sewage in rivers I’m back in Ilkley.
From getting data through FOIs to the EA publicly releasing it now.
We know more now. But how much has changed ?

England's largest natural lake, and World Heritage site, could be putting swimmer health at risk, say campaigners.

Lake Windermere’s waters are classed as “excellent” by the Environment Agency, but critics say the testing regime isn’t up to the job.

What future for Windermere ?
Campaigners call for changes to bathing water testing laws.
And charity with 90 year history with the lake leaves partnership with EA and UU saying there wasn’t enough action
Freshwater Biological Association (FBA) MattStaniek

Our report from #Ripon over plans by the Cathedral to build an annex which would mean the loss of 11 trees with ⁦alex thomson⁩ #C4news channel4.com/news/backlash-…