East Kent Sewage Pollution: Southern Water, Five Councils and the Statutory Nuisance Law

We’re The Shepway Vox Team, and over the past few weeks we’ve watched the same pattern play out again and again. Residents complain that sewage-contaminated discharges are turning up in places that are supposed to be public amenities: rivers, ditches, drains, ponds, the canal. Officers and agencies point at each other like a pantomime. The water company points to permits and “storm events”. The regulator points to the water company. And councils — the one part of the system with the most direct “boots on the ground” powers — too often end up as polite bystanders.

So here’s the point of this piece. Statutory nuisance law exists precisely for situations like this. It is not exotic. It is not theoretical. It is not “only for barking dogs”. And it has been used successfully against water companies before. Councils have served abatement notices on water companies and litigated the point through the courts. Sometimes the council wins; sometimes the company wins; often the arguments are technical and hard-fought. But the existence of that case law is the opposite of an excuse. It’s proof that councils are not powerless.

The geography: the Stour, the Dour, and the Royal Military Canal

This isn’t one neat, single-site complaint. It’s two linked East Kent stories that share the same legal lever.

First, the River Stour catchment area and its downstream chain of consequences: the Stour through Canterbury district, the Stodmarsh area, the Lower Stour around Sandwich (Dover district), the outfall zone into Pegwell Bay (Thanet), and the coastal waters used by the public, including Viking Bay in Broadstairs. Add the River Dour and Dover Harbour — another receiving environment, another public-facing watercourse. Plus the East Stour and Upper Great Stour.

Second, a separate but equally stark route: Southern Water’s Hamstreet Waste Water Treatment Works (WWTW) in Ashford borough, with alleged sewage-derived contamination entering the Hamstreet Arm / Speringbrook Sewer, discharging into the Royal Military Canal, travelling downstream toward West Hythe (the orange line), and ultimately reaching the sea. That is a cross-boundary problem in plain sight: Ashford at the upstream end, Folkestone & Hythe at the downstream impact.

Put simply, five councils sit around this map: Canterbury City Council, Thanet District Council, Dover District Council, Ashford Borough Council, and Folkestone & Hythe District Council. They can coordinate, investigate and act — or they can each shrug and say “not ours”.

What the law actually gives councils: a real enforcement route

The key provisions are old, blunt, and designed for public health.

Under section 259 of the Public Health Act 1936, it is a statutory nuisance for “any pond, pool, ditch, gutter or watercourse” to be “so foul” or in such a state as to be prejudicial to health or a nuisance. That language is not modern or delicate — because it was written for the practical problem it describes.

The Environmental Protection Act 1990 then pulls statutory nuisances into a clear local authority enforcement framework. Section 79 is the gateway: it defines statutory nuisances and requires councils to inspect their areas “from time to time” to detect nuisances that should be dealt with, and to take reasonably practicable steps to investigate where a complaint is made by someone living in their area. Section 80 is the muscle: where the authority is satisfied a statutory nuisance exists (or is likely to occur or recur), it must serve an abatement notice requiring the nuisance to be stopped and/or prevented from recurring.

For lay readers, the abatement notice is the key idea. It’s a formal legal notice, with legal consequences. It is not a “please could you” letter. It is the step Parliament designed councils to use when the facts justify it.

And if councils don’t act? Section 82 EPA 1990 sits there as the pressure valve: it allows a “person aggrieved” to go to the Magistrates’ Court and ask the court to make an order. In other words: councils are not the only route — but they are meant to be the primary route, because they can investigate, gather evidence and act systematically.

“Isn’t this all for the Environment Agency?” No. That’s the trap.

We can already hear the familiar refrain: “Storm overflows and sewage works are regulated by permits, so it’s for the Environment Agency.”

That is a half-truth that becomes a full excuse.

Yes, the EA regulates permits. But the existence of a regulatory regime does not automatically cancel other legal duties and remedies. The Supreme Court underlined that point in Manchester Ship Canal v United Utilities (No 2): statutory water-industry powers and regulation did not, by themselves, prevent nuisance/trespass claims when a watercourse is polluted by discharges of foul water. The lesson for councils is obvious: “there’s a regulator” is not a legal force-field that stops everything else.

The High Court’s decision in Williamson v Caerphilly is another warning sign — not because it’s about sewage, but because it’s about councils’ decision-making when statutory nuisance is raised. The direction of travel is clear: you cannot lawfully wave nuisance complaints away with a generic “not for us” response.

And the real-world reasons for independent action have just become harder to ignore. On 1 March 2026, the Guardian reported FOI-based data suggesting that thousands of serious pollution incidents reported by water companies in England were downgraded without an Environment Agency site visit. The figures quoted were stark: 2,778 “serious” incidents reported in 2024, with 2,735 downgraded to “minor”; officers attended only 496 before downgrading, with the remainder downgraded on water company evidence alone. If that is the enforcement reality upstream, then councils in East Kent have an even stronger duty to avoid outsourcing judgement. The statutory nuisance framework is built around local investigation and local decision-making — not blind reliance on a system that may not be turning up at the riverbank.

Councils have used these powers against water companies before — and the courts have taken them seriously

This isn’t new territory, and it isn’t “impossible” just because the alleged polluter is a water company. Councils and public authorities have served abatement notices on water companies before, and the courts have treated those notices as something that must be taken seriously and analysed on the law and the facts. In Hounslow LBC v Thames Water, the dispute arose from odours at a sewage treatment works and the High Court grappled directly with whether statutory nuisance enforcement could bite on a water company operations. In City of Bradford MBC v Yorkshire Water, it was common ground that a sewage deposit amounted to a statutory nuisance — the case turned not on whether councils had powers, but on the technical question of whether the pipework in issue was a “public sewer” for which the undertaker was responsible. And in Falmouth & Truro Port Health Authority v South West Water, the authority served an abatement notice relying expressly on section 259 of the Public Health Act 1936, with the Court of Appeal scrutinising the scope of “watercourse” and the mechanics of the notice. The lesson for East Kent is plain: these cases weren’t about councils being powerless — they were about councils using real enforcement tools that courts will test rigorously. That is exactly why the five councils here must investigate properly, nail down responsibility, gather independent evidence, and then act where the legal threshold is met — whether or not a “storm overflow” label is being waved around.

The real-world allegation: “any deposit”, foul water, and sewage markers in sediment

When people say “sewage pollution”, they don’t just mean an unpleasant smell on a bad day.

They mean sewage-derived contamination in water: discoloured flows, foul odours, sanitary debris, sewage fungus-like growths, and the kind of residues that settle into bed sediments and margins. They mean places where children play nearby, where dog-walkers go every day, where people fish, paddle, kayak, birdwatch, or just use the footpaths. They mean tourism beaches — St Mary’s Bay, Dymchurch, Pegwell Bay, Viking Bay — where the water is not an abstract “environmental asset” but a contact surface.

That is why section 79(1)(e) EPA 1990 matters: “any accumulation or deposit” that is prejudicial to health or a nuisance can be a statutory nuisance. Deposits and contamination do not stop being deposits because rainfall has “diluted” them. Dilution might affect how you prove it — it does not remove the Councils duty to investigate.

This is also why a quick glance from a bridge is not good enough. Sewage evidence can be episodic and it can sit in sediment. A serious council investigation looks like timed site visits, recorded observations, photos/video, and water-and-sediment sampling with chain-of-custody to a UKAS-accredited lab, testing for faecal indicator bacteria and appropriate markers. If you do not test, you end up arguing about smells and colour like it’s 1890.

“Storm overflows have to happen.” Do they?

Here’s the line we’re not going to let pass unchallenged: “Storm overflows are inevitable.”

Overflows are engineered pressure-relief points in a system that was built — and then expanded — on the assumption that it was acceptable to spill diluted sewage when it rains hard. That is not a law of nature. It is an infrastructure and investment choice. And if anyone tries to tell you it is “unavoidable”, the right response from a public authority is not acceptance; it’s evidence: what was spilled, why, for how long, and what preventable steps were (or were not) taken.

Solution or problem: the choice facing the five councils

If Ashford Canterbury, Dover, Folkestone & Hythe and Thanet fail to act, then they too become part of the problem and the outcomes will be predictable. Complaints bounce. Responsibility blurs at district boundaries. Residents are told to report it elsewhere. The water company carries on, the regulator logs it, and the public experiences it.

If the five Councils act as part of the solution, the steps are not mysterious. They coordinate cross-boundary investigations rather than treating catchments as administrative inconveniences. They commit to independent sampling rather than relying solely on the alleged polluter’s narrative. They make written, reasoned decisions on whether a statutory nuisance exists. And if they are satisfied it does, they use section 80 and serve an abatement notice drafted carefully enough to survive the inevitable appeal.

Water companies do appeal. They argue definitions. They argue responsibility. They argue reasonableness. The Bradford v Yorkshire Water litigation shows how technical these fights can get. But the conclusion is not “so don’t bother”. The conclusion is: if you’re a council, do it properly — because Parliament gave you the power for a reason.

The core question we’re putting to the five councils

So here is the question that matters, and it is unavoidably binary.

Will these five Councils use the legal tools they already have — PHA 1936 section 259, EPA 1990 sections 79 and 80 — to investigate and, where justified, abate sewage-derived nuisance in our rivers, watercourses, canal reaches and coastal receiving waters?

Or will they choose the easier path: treat it as someone else’s job, and become part of the machinery that allows “exceptional discharges” to become the normal background noise of East Kent life?

Because once the public understands that statutory nuisance action against water companies, such as Southern Water, is not unprecedented — and that the Supreme Court has just reminded everyone that a regulatory regime does not automatically cancel other legal remedies — the old excuse stops sounding like prudent caution and starts sounding like the five councils are on the Environment Agency and Southern Water Team. If that’s not where these five Councils stand, prove it to the residents of East Kent: investigate properly, publish your reasoning, and act where the legal test is met.

The Shepway Vox Team

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