‘Unacceptable’: how raw sewage has affected rivers in England and Wales – in maps

Hundreds of thousands of raw sewage discharges were recorded last year. These maps show where these were and what the impact is

More than 384,000 discharges of raw sewage were reported by water companies across England and Wales in 2022, official figures show, in what the Rivers Trust has described as extremely bad news for environmental and human health".

However, the true scale may be even greater, as a new legal challenge has claimed. Meanwhile, another set of water firms are under investigation by the regulator Ofwat and the Environment Agency for alleged illegal dumping of sewage from treatment works, and an independent watchdog is now saying that the government and even the regulators themselves may have broken the law by letting firms discharge raw sewage more often than law allows.