Southern Water Drought Plan Exposes Kent’s Water Supply Crisis
Thousands have lived without love, not one without water. W. H. Auden Southern Water is telling us to think about drought before we have no choice. Not just hosepipe bans. [...]
Southern Water
Romney Marsh Flood Risk: Cllr Tony Hills Warns Sea Defences Must Be Strengthened
Cllr Tony Hills speaks to The Shepway Vox Team about sea defences, flooding, warming waters, sewage, planning and why Romney Marsh must not be treated as somewhere that can [...]
Southern Water Sewage: Why Some Kent Councils Investigate and Others Look Away
Two Kent councils are now investigating possible statutory nuisance complaints over alleged untreated sewage discharges by Southern Water. Others are hesitating, dragging [...]
Folkestone & Hythe Council Backs East Stour and Romney Marsh Sewage Testing
There are some council debates that arrive gift-wrapped for local government purists: knotty, procedural, full of worthy intent and decorated with enough amendments to make [...]
Southern Water Bewl Water Signs Show £30m and £40m as FHDC Faces Statutory Nuisance Test
Two Southern Water signs at Bewl Water appear to describe the same reservoir-upgrade scheme, yet one says “over £30 million” and the other says “over £40 million”. [...]
Southern Water Sewage Spills in the East Stour: Why Councils Must Use Statutory Nuisance Powers
England had its driest spring for more than 100 years, and 2025 was England’s warmest and sunniest year on record. Even so, the selected Southern Water overflows affecting [...]
FHDC Sewage Testing Motion Demands Evidence on Romney Marsh and East Stour Pollution
On 1 April, Folkestone & Hythe District Council has a chance to do something painfully obvious but surprisingly rare in local politics: stop holding yet another round of [...]
Could Tony Vaughan MP Take Southern Water to Court Over Sewage?
Joining a briefing is easy. Holding a placard is easy. Posting angry words on social media is easy. The harder test is whether Folkestone and Hythe’s MP is prepared to do [...]
Southern Water, Sewage and Kent’s Water Crisis Reach County Hall
Updated 18 March 2026 Thousands have lived without love, not one without water. W. H. Auden Cllr Stuart Heaver’s motion on water infrastructure is serious, overdue and [...]
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 [...]
What Powers Does Kent’s Director of Public Health Have Over Sewage Pollution?
Following on from yesterday’s article, Kent E. coli Cases, Sewage and the Public Health Risk, the next question is unavoidable. If sewage pollution is plainly a [...]
Stodmarsh Sewage Crisis: Southern Water, Otterpool Park and East Kent
At Canterbury’s scrutiny committee on 4 March (from1hr 46m 44s onwards), Stodmarsh kept popping up like the blinking red light on a dashboard that everyone hopes belongs to [...]
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, [...]
Southern Water in Kent: Bailiffs, Sewage and Beaches Closed for Swimming.
Fresh parliamentary papers have put an ugly new number on an old public grievance. On 6 March, the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee published debt-collection [...]
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 [...]
Folkestone & Hythe District Council: Councillors Challenge Youth Football Fees, Hythe Pool Spend, Princes Parade Delay and Southern Water
Folkestone & Hythe District Council meets in Full Council on Wednesday 25 February at 7pm, and councillors have published a set of questions that range from the price of [...]
Southern Water Legal Action: Folkestone & Hythe District Council Escalate Sewage Pollution Fight
Folkestone & Hythe District Council, Southern Water and the Environment Agency faced residents and campaigners in the same room on Thursday 19 February, to discuss sewage [...]
Dymchurch Dippers Poem Calls Out Southern Water Sewage in the Bay
The Ballad Of The Beautiful Bay Spoiled by Dirty Water. The sun is shining, it’s a beautiful day,I want to swim across the bay,What’s that I spy in the water [...]
Southern Water Sewage: The Hidden Cost to Kent’s Sea Swimmers and Seaside Businesses
Updated: 20/02/26 @ 14:50 This is a long read, because the devil is in the detail — and, in this case, the detail is the difference between “a reassuring icon on a map” [...]
Hythe Bay Bathing Water Warnings: Sewage Pollution and E. coli from Hythe to Dungeness
Hythe Bay’s “no swim” problem didn’t start in the 2020s. It has a paper trail that runs from the mid-1970s, through the coliform “fail” tables of the 1980s, into [...]
Southern Water Bills Rise as Sewage Spills Persist: 50 Years of Warnings on the Kent Coast
Southern Water customers are being asked to pay more again, and the public justification is that the money will “fix” the system. From April, the average bill is due to [...]
South East Water Firms Lost 127.97 Billion Litres to Leaks in a Year — Targets Missed, Fines Paid, Customers Still Left Short
“Water is the driving force of all nature.” – Leonardo Da Vinci “Thousands have lived without love, not one without water.” – W.H.Auden Fresh water [...]
Southern Water’s 47% bill increase shows blatant disregard for ecological preservation and customer welfare
Southern Water (SW), a utility provider serving 2.6 million water customers and 4.7 million wastewater users across Kent, Sussex, Hampshire, and the Isle of Wight, operates [...]
Part 2 – Land/Property Ownership by Companies & Organisations in Folkestone & Hythe District
Who owns the vast swathes of land and property in our district matters. It matters because land is a scarce resource – as Mark Twain put it, ‘they aren’t making it any [...]
Water, Water Everywhere, Much With Plops and Stink
This is a Guest Post On Wednesday 10th April 2024, I went along to a public meeting regarding the state of our local waterways and coast. The event was held in New [...]