Hamstreet Sewage Scandal: Why FHDC Failed to Act While Ashford Investigated
Residents raised a serious complaint about suspected foul contamination moving from Hamstreet towards Hythe and the sea. One council replied with site visits, evidence-gathering and public-health checks. The other replied with the wrong legal section, a cramped reading of its powers, and a letter that raises an awkward question for Folkestone & Hythe’s green-led administration: after years of talking about sewage, why does the problem look worse, not better?
Residents who fear foul water is moving through local sewers, ditches and watercourses towards the sea do not need another round of bureaucratic buck-passing. They need councils and regulators to inspect, test, coordinate and, where necessary, act. On that test, the contrast between Ashford Borough Council and Folkestone & Hythe District Council could hardly be clearer.
The complaint sent on 24 February was not some vague neighbourhood grumble. It set out an alleged route from Hamstreet, via the Speringbrook and linked watercourses, onwards towards the Royal Military Canal and ultimately the Redoubt outfall in Hythe. It flagged suspected sewage contamination, possible public-health consequences and the statutory nuisance powers available under the Public Health Act 1936 and the Environmental Protection Act 1990. It also asked for something entirely reasonable: a joined-up response, named officers and preservation of records.
The supporting material gives the concern real force. One photograph shows the channel with a relatively clear flow. Another appears to show the same channel during an alleged spill event, this time running a far paler, cloudier and more opaque colour. Photographs do not, on their own, prove precisely what a discharge is.
But they plainly do show a marked visual change that any competent authority ought to want to explain. The Southern Water incident screenshot adds still more context, recording a historic discharge event into a tributary of the Speringbrook Sewer lasting 52 hours and 32 minutes between 18 and 21 February 2026.
Ashford Borough Council’s response, whatever the eventual conclusion, reads like the beginning of a proper investigation. A named officer was assigned. The council said it would examine the type, frequency and duration of the alleged discharge, the condition of the watercourse and the possible exposure pathway. It said it had reached out to UKHSA and environmental health teams to explore whether there had been any clustering of gastrointestinal illness over the past three years. It said it had already visited the site and intended to return in wetter conditions, including during or shortly after rainfall, when any discharge would be more likely to be active or visible.
That is not proof that the council will ultimately find a statutory nuisance. But it is what an investigating authority is supposed to look like. It is evidence-gathering. It is site work. It is a council behaving as though the allegation is serious enough to test.
FHDC’s response is strikingly different. To be fair, one part of it is unobjectionable: asking for contact details for a nearby resident is perfectly sensible if a council wants first-hand evidence about frequency, smell, effect on amenity or possible health impacts. But that sensible step is then used as the centrepiece of the reply, almost as if the entire investigation depends on the resident coming forward first. Instead of setting out its own inspection plan, its own evidence-gathering programme or its own liaison strategy, FHDC pivots quickly to legal caution and institutional self-protection.
That is especially awkward because FHDC is a green-led administration. Its draft corporate plan places “Nature” and climate action among the council’s stated priorities. It also states “We will: Hold water companies to account for the quality of our drinking water, rivers and coastal waters.“ In other words, this is not a council that can plausibly claim environmental protection is somebody else’s department.
Speringbrook Sewer rising in Hamstreet and Flowing Out Into the Sea Near The Redoubt in Dymchurch
FHDC is a Green-led council. It should, in theory, be the sort of authority that does not need reminding that filthy watercourses, sewage-tainted flows and pollution reaching the sea are bad things. Yet here we are. The council has spent three years talking to the Environment Agency, Southern Water and the community in one room, with Cllr Jim Martin (pictured) chairing the meetings, and the the obvious question after three years is: to what end? Residents do not need another round of warm words, stakeholder engagement and carefully filed emails while the position on the ground appears to get worse. They need action. A Green-led council that cannot or will not use its powers to protect rivers, sewers, ditches and watercourses feeding into the sea is not merely failing to solve the problem; it is helping to sustain it. At some point, “ongoing discussions” becomes another phrase for doing nothing. That point has plainly been reached.
The real problem for FHDC is not just that its letter sounds cautious. It is that the law in it appears to be wrong. The council says it is restricted by “section 70(10)” of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. But that does not appear to be the right section for this issue, as it has be repealed. The part of the law dealing with statutory nuisance is section 79, not section 70. In simple terms, FHDC seems to have cited the wrong legal provision while explaining why it may not be able to act.
That matters because the law on foul watercourses is actually quite clear. Section 259 of the Public Health Act 1936 says that if a ditch, gutter or watercourse is so foul that it harms health or causes a nuisance, or is so blocked that it causes those problems, that can count as a statutory nuisance. And once something counts as a statutory nuisance, the Environmental Protection Act gives the council powers, under s79(1)(h) without needing the Secretary of State’s permission, to step in. That can include serving an abatement notice under s80 of the EPA 1990 requiring the problem to be dealt with, as it is likely to occur or recur.
So the key point is simple: FHDC’s letter reads as if the law is an excuse for inaction, when in fact the law is one of the main tools the council should be considering.
That broader point is not unique to Hamstreet or Hythe. Across England, communities living beside polluted rivers have been turning to statutory nuisance complaints when they believe water companies have failed to stop sewage pollution and local authorities need to act. The logic is straightforward: where repeated contamination makes watercourses unsafe, interferes with the ordinary use and enjoyment of land, and creates a risk of harm to health, residents are entitled to demand decisive intervention. The damage is not abstract. It can affect recreation, sport, local businesses and the simple everyday ability to live alongside a river, ditch, sewer or watercourse without feeling that it has become an open sewer. The Guardian reported in December 2025 that communities across south-east England were filing coordinated statutory nuisance complaints against Thames Water on exactly that basis, saying sewage pollution had made rivers unsafe and disrupted recreation, sport, businesses and everyday enjoyment.
Nor is this some free-floating local panic detached from the planning evidence. Ashford’s own Hamstreet planning report already records repeated concern about wastewater and sewerage capacity. It says Southern Water had previously advised that reinforcements to the public sewer network might be necessary to provide additional foul sewerage capacity for the site. It also records parish objections saying the existing sewage works was “not large enough”, was “currently not coping” and was “beyond its capacity”, with “numerous lorries” attending daily, while other objection material stated Southern Water had advised the existing drainage system lacked the required capacity and that enabling works could take 24 months.
None of that proves, beyond argument, that every cloudy flow seen by residents is sewage from a particular Southern Water asset. But it does demolish any idea that these fears are fanciful. There is already documented concern, in a formal planning report, about local wastewater infrastructure under strain, sewerage capacity being exceeded and network reinforcements being needed. In that context, a serious downstream complaint should be met with harder scrutiny, not softer excuses.
So yes, credit where it is due. On the evidence of its letter, Ashford Borough Council looks like a council trying to find facts. It has assigned an officer, visited the site, set out lines of inquiry and indicated further monitoring. That is what good administration looks like at the start of an environmental health investigation.
FHDC, by contrast, looks like a council trying to narrow the gateway, slow the issue down and wrap itself in legal caution before it has properly done the spadework. When a public authority cites the wrong section while explaining why it may not act, residents are entitled to wonder whether the problem is caution, competence, or both. Put less politely, FHDC’s letter has the air of the Peter Principle in action: an institution sounding confident while getting the law wrong. Furthermore, when its Cabinet Member for Water, Cllr Stephen Scoffham (pictured), doesn’t bother to respond to emails, then it’s clear Shepway Greens are part of the problem, not the solution.
On its own sewage campaign page, published ahead of the May 2023 local elections, Shepway Green Party made sewage a political issue and asked voters to back change. Three years on, residents are entitled to judge the results for themselves. A green-led council should not need years of conversations with the Environment Agency and Southern Water to work out that foul flows in rivers, sewers, ditches and watercourses running across our district, and into the sea are unacceptable. It should not be using environmental language in campaign material and committee papers while retreating into legal mush in frontline enforcement letters. If the Greens want to claim the mantle of environmental stewardship, this is the kind of case that tests whether that means anything at all. Residents have had the meetings, the discussions and the carefully worded replies for three years. What they have not had is enough visible action. Enough talking. Act.
The Shepway Vox Team
Dissent is NOT a Crime
An oddly familar local story: residents report what looks and smells like a sewage problem, Ashford appears to put its wellies on, and FHDC seems to reach for a muddled letter and a nice cup of tea, as usual. For a Green-led council, doing sweet fanny adams about filthy watercourses is not the gretest advert for enviromental leadership. Still, perhaps more ‘ongoing discussons’ will clear the water. Or at least the inbox.
Brilliant. As a sea swimmer, all I can say is thank you for raising this issue over the last few weeks.