Kent Councils’ Environmental Health Powers on Sewage: Who to Contact and What They Can Do

Yesterday, we looked at What Powers Does Kent’s Director of Public Health Have Over Sewage Pollution. Today, in the final part of this public health series, we turn to the question official Kent so often wraps in cotton wool: when filthy watercourses are carrying storm overflows, resistant organisms and an obvious potential risk to health, do your local councils actually have legal powers they can use?

Spolier alert: Yes, they do.

Not every power, and not in every situation. They cannot wave a magic wand over the open sea. But where the problem is a foul inland watercourse — a ditch, drain, stream, gutter, watercourse or river channel — the law is far less helpless than Southern Water, and sometimes councils, would like the public to think.

Start with the basic point. In 2022, Professor Sir Chris Whitty (pictured) warned that sewage in water is a serious public health issue, not just an environmental embarrassment. He said rivers, seas and waterways used by the public should be free from sewage, and made clear that the danger is not limited to dramatic storm overflows. Even ordinary sewage treatment still leaves living organisms in discharged waste. In May 2024, he underlined the point again, warning that even when treatment plants are working as intended, there is still a risk of infection from paddling in rivers because treated and untreated effluent continues to contain faecal bacteria. That is not campaign language. It is the Chief Medical Officer stating the risk plainly.

The Chartered Institute of Environmental Health says much the same. It has said sewage pollution is so emotive because people are, in effect, paddling and swimming in human waste. It has specifically identified pathogens in sewage including E. coli. It has also said that natural waters can still contain pathogens such as Escherichia coli even when they meet official bathing standards, with contamination coming from wastewater effluent, raw sewage and runoff. It has also called for stronger enforcement against water companies over sewage pollution. In other words, the professional body for environmental health does not see this as a minor inconvenience for walkers in waterproofs. It sees it as a health issue.

Then there is Canterbury. Evidence given by Dr Iain Goodall to Canterbury City Council’s Scrutiny Committee on 4 March 2026 was hard to dismiss and harder to hear. Weekly sampling of the River Stour at 16 sites across Canterbury found a 12-month median background level of about 1,200 E. coli colony-forming units per 100 millilitres, with intestinal coliform levels running two to three times higher. Dr Goodall said that, if judged by bathing water standards, the river would be rated poor. He also described antibiotic-resistance testing on 220 samples from heavily used sites, where viable E. coli colonies still survived after exposure to antibiotics. Some of those colonies were multidrug-resistant, including resistance to polymyxins and carbapenems, both regarded as last-resort classes of antibiotics. But the most troubling part of Dr Goodall’s evidence was his stark warning: “There is a non-zero risk to river users of potentially contracting a serious infection.” Put plainly, this is not just dirty water. It is water carrying organisms that no one should be casual about. You do not need a doctorate in microbiology to understand the point. Entering the Stour to swim or paddle is not merely unpleasant; it amounts to playing Russian roulette with your health.

This is where the old council excuse starts to wear thin. Once a watercourse is not just unpleasant but so foul as to be prejudicial to health or a nuisance, the law shifts. Section 259 of the Public Health Act 1936 says that any pond, pool, ditch, gutter or watercourse in that condition is a statutory nuisance. Government guidance says councils must investigate complaints that could amount to a statutory nuisance. If they are satisfied that a statutory nuisance exists, has occurred, or is likely to occur or recur, they must serve an abatement notice. Not “may, if resources permit”. Not “might, after stakeholder engagement”. Must.

That matters because an abatement notice is not just a formal gesture to make it look as though something is being done. It is the point where legal concern is meant to become legal compulsion. If the notice is breached without reasonable excuse, that breach is a criminal offence. The council can prosecute in the magistrates’ court. If it succeeds, the offender may receive a criminal conviction and a fine, with further penalties if the breach continues. The council may also carry out work in default and recover the cost. So when councils speak as though all they can do is send stern letters and keep the matter under review, they are not describing the law. They are describing a choice.

This is not just theoretical. In Hounslow v Thames Water, the court held that sewage treatment works could count as “premises” for the purposes of statutory nuisance. Put simply, Thames Water could not escape the nuisance regime by saying, in effect, that sewage infrastructure was somehow outside it. In Bradford v Yorkshire Water, sewage deposited on private premises was treated as a statutory nuisance; the legal dispute was about who was responsible for the sewer, not about whether the council’s legal route was imaginary. Those cases do not prove councils will always win. They do prove something more basic and more important: sewerage undertakers are not automatically immune from nuisance law. And if a lawful abatement notice is served and then breached, criminal enforcement is not some campaign fantasy. It is what the legislation is there for.

There is, however, an important caveat. We are not relying here on cases about the sea or estuaries. Older authority shows that trying to squeeze a large estuary into the “watercourse” category can go badly wrong. So let us keep this simple. The strongest statutory nuisance route is for foul inland watercourses — ditches, drains, streams, river channels and similar places — and for sewage works nuisance in the right circumstances. That is more than enough for Kent, which is hardly short of inland watercourses. The Stour does not need to be the English Channel before the law notices it.

There is another official excuse that deserves to be put out to pasture. Councils sometimes behave as though an environmental permit makes statutory nuisance powers disappear in a puff of legal smoke. It does not. Government guidance on the overlap between permitting and nuisance makes clear that councils still have to inspect, investigate and, if satisfied, serve an abatement notice.

That is why section 259 of the Public Health Act 1936 matters. It says that any pond, pool, ditch, gutter or watercourse which is so foul as to be prejudicial to health or a nuisance is a statutory nuisance for the purposes of Part III of the Environmental Protection Act 1990. It also covers parts of watercourses that are so choked or silted up that they obstruct the proper flow of water and thereby cause a nuisance or conditions prejudicial to health.

That in turn engages section 79(1)(h) of the 1990 Act: “any other matter declared by any enactment to be a statutory nuisance.” In practical terms, it gives environmental health officers a more direct route and avoids some of the extra awkwardness that can arise in overlapping permit cases. The point is simple. The council must still investigate. An abatement notice can still be served. The duty does not melt away because somebody mutters the word “permit” and hopes everyone loses interest.

CIEH’s own material makes the point even more clearly. One of its articles on statutory nuisance argues that environmental health practitioners do not use the “prejudicial to health” limb nearly as much as they could, and that they should be more confident about using their expertise That matters here. If environmental health officers are the experts on whether conditions are injurious, or likely to cause injury, to health, then councils cannot keep hiding behind the pretence that every filthy watercourse is too medically complex to touch. If it looks foul, smells foul, is carrying faecal organisms and there is credible evidence of a health risk, the starting point is not paralysis. It is investigation. And if the legal test is met, the route does not end with another meeting. It can end with an abatement notice, a prosecution, a criminal conviction and a fine.

At this point, the satire almost writes itself. Southern Water can issue apologies on an industrial scale. Councils can express concern in carefully measured doses. Regulators can release updates. Meanwhile, the actual discharge keeps turning up in the places where children paddle, dogs splash and residents walk beside what ought to be ordinary watercourses, not scenes from a public health textbook. If the law says councils must investigate foul watercourses, and if it says a breached abatement notice can end in the magistrates’ court with a conviction and a fine, then the old routine of shrugging towards “partnership working” begins to look less like caution and more like performance.

The truth is much simpler than the bureaucracy. Professor Whitty says sewage in waters people use is a public-health danger. CIEH says E. coli and other pathogens in sewage are a health concern and wants tougher action. Dr Iain Goodall’s evidence in Canterbury says the Stour is carrying faecal contamination and resistant organisms serious enough to alarm any halfway responsible public body. And the statute book says foul inland watercourses can amount to statutory nuisances, which councils must investigate and which can lead — if notices are ignored — to prosecution, criminal conviction and a fine.

So this is not a story about having no powers. It is a story about having powers and using them too timidly, too slowly, or not at all. The law exists. The route exists. The sanction exists. What is too often missing is not legal authority, but institutional backbone.

And that, in the end, is the most British part of it all. Not the sewage, but the ability to stand beside it, armed with powers, evidence and a statutory duty, and still somehow behave as though the real nuisance is the person pointing it out.

If you want to raise a complaint to your local council’s environemtnal health team, via s259, then here is a template letter which you can check (as we are not lawyers). Collect the evidence and send to them – click here  

Environmental Health Team addresses for each council in Kent.

Ashford Borough Council — environmental.protection@ashford.gov.uk; Canterbury City Council — envhealth@canterbury.gov.uk; Dartford Borough Council — customerservices.envhealth@dartford.gov.uk; Dover District Council — envprotection@dover.gov.uk; Folkestone & Hythe District Council — environmental.services@folkestone-hythe.gov.uk; Gravesham Borough Council — ep@gravesham.gov.uk; Maidstone Borough Council — ehadmin@midkent.gov.uk; Medway Council — environmental.protection@medway.gov.uk; Sevenoaks District Council — environmental.health@sevenoaks.gov.uk; Swale Borough Council — ehadmin@midkent.gov.uk;Thanet District Council — environmental.health@thanet.gov.uk; Tonbridge & Malling Borough Council — environmental.protection@tmbc.gov.uk; Tunbridge Wells Borough Council — EHAdmin@MidKent.gov.uk

The Shepway Vox Team

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