Water bosses in England and Wales face bonus bans for illegal sewage discharges

Senior executives got 26m in extra payments over the past four years despite public outrage at extent and frequency of overflows

The government is to ban bonuses for water company bosses in England and Wales who fail to prevent illegal sewage spills that pollute rivers, lakes and seas.

The policy, which many campaigners - including Labour and the Liberal Democrats - have been lobbying the government to implement, follows public outrage over the impact and scale of recent illegal raw sewage discharges.