In total, 37 organisations – including, but not limited to, trade unions, grassroots campaigners, nationwide NGOs, ethical businesses, media platforms – have joined this call to action. This is such a powerful representation of the scale of the public outrage at the ongoing sewage crisis and the willpower there is to transform the water industry once and for all.
Read the letter below
Dear Keir Starmer, Prime Minister and Steve Reed, Secretary of State for Environment and Rural Affairs,
We demand an urgent end to the sewage scandal through systemic transformation of the water industry – public and environmental good must be put before private profit.
A year ago, you began your premiership with a clear commitment to deliver on your election mandate to end the sewage pollution crisis and clean up our waters. On Monday, the Independent Water Commission is set to publish its final recommendations but it will fall fatally short if it fails to confront the root cause of the crisis: a system built towards serving private profit cannot deliver an end to sewage pollution.
Your election mandate has given you a once-in-a-generation opportunity to fix our broken water system. But this will take more than incremental change—it demands a decisive break from the failed model that has deluged our coastlines, rivers and lakes with sewage.
The need for a full system overhaul is painfully clear. Since privatisation in 1990, water companies have paid shareholders over £74 billion in dividends—while burdening the system with £69 billion in debt. Despite repeated promises to invest, shareholders have actually withdrawn more than they have put in, meanwhile essential infrastructure has been left to crumble. In 2024 alone, untreated sewage was dumped 565,383 times across England and Wales. It’s a 35-year tale of broken pipes, broken promises and a fundamentally broken system.
The consequences of inaction are shocking. Coastal economies and communities are being hammered. Rivers declared ecologically dead. Pollution poisoning our wildlife. Thousands of people are falling ill after swimming in raw sewage. Yet water bills will keep rising – to service debt, to fund dividends – and so it is the public who will continue to pay the price.
Enough is enough. You must act now. Rebuild a system that people can be proud of, not angry about. A system that serves the public and protects nature – not private profit. Anything less would be a betrayal of the promise you made to the electorate.
Yours,
Surfers Against Sewage
River Action
Greenpeace UK
WWF UK
GMB Union
Compass
Zero Hour
Friends of the Earth England, Wales and Northern Ireland
GMB Union
Public and Commercial Services Union
Green New Deal Rising
Wildlife and Countryside Link
Triodos Bank
The Wave Project
38 Degrees
Faith For The Climate
People & Planet
Medact
Health for XR
Dirty Water Campaign
Blue Marine Foundation
Women’s Environmental Network
Angling Trust
End Sewage Convoys and Pollution Exmouth (ESCAPE)
SOS Whitstable
Campaign for National Parks
Centre for Alternative Technology
Finisterre
Carve Magazine
SurfGirl Magazine
Planet Patrol
Rewilding Britain
Christian Surfers
Good Law Project
The Wildlife Trusts
Clean Water Sport Alliance Wales
Clean Water Sport Alliance
The Rivers Trust
