The regulators’ first joint report says nothing about storm overflows

On 29 October the four bodies that regulate water in England and Wales published their first joint report on how the industry is performing. The Drinking Water Inspectorate, the Environment Agency, Natural Resources Wales and Ofwat have brought their separate annual assessments together in one place, with a page on each of the 17 water companies. The regulators call it an important first step towards greater collaboration, as the government moves towards a more integrated system of water regulation. We welcome it. We have also read it closely, and the thing that stands out is what it leaves out.

The headline for our area is blunt. The regulators judge South West Water’s overall environmental performance to be poor. The company recorded 137 pollution incidents in 2025, three of them serious, and reported only 71 per cent of them itself. The report singles South West Water out as having “failed to proactively self-report a number of them”. It missed 4 of its 69 environmental improvement actions. The average time each property went without water almost quintupled compared with the year before, sewage flooding inside homes rose by 74 per cent, and the company ranks 15th of 17 for customer satisfaction. The Drinking Water Inspectorate has put it on a formal transformation programme. All of this comes while South West Water has around £3.8 billion to spend between 2025 and 2030.

Across the industry the picture is mixed. Drinking water passed 99.97 per cent of tests and sewage flooding in homes has fallen. But there were 2,991 pollution incidents, 84 of them serious, and companies missed 142 of 2,254 required environmental actions.

What the report does not mention

The words “storm overflow” do not appear anywhere in the report, and nor does “spill”. For the issue that has done more than any other to destroy public trust in the water industry, the regulators’ first joint statement has nothing to say. Nor does it go below company level. There is no river, no catchment and no individual asset in it, so a reader on the Dart can learn that South West Water is performing poorly but not where, or what is being done about it.

That is the gap our River Hub was built to fill. Using the Environment Agency’s own spill records, the company’s live overflow feeds and the published improvement programme, it shows the Dart asset by asset. Here is some of what it shows that the joint report does not.

The 51 storm overflows we track on the Dart have recorded 55 spills on days with no rain so far in 2026. Overflows exist to relieve the sewers in heavy rain, so a spill in dry weather is a signal that something is wrong and needs investigating. We also flag overflows that spill on days when their own treatment works did not, which points to a local problem such as a blockage rather than the weather.

Eighteen emergency overflows discharge to the Dart. They are meant to operate only when a pumping station fails, yet between them they discharged for 298 hours in 2024, and one at Warfleet in Dartmouth ran for 2,514 hours in 2023. None of this appears in the public storm overflow data. We had to ask for it under the Environmental Information Regulations.

Thirteen overflows with a clear problem on record, such as frequent spills, very long spills or dry-weather spills, have no improvement or investigation of any kind planned against them. Between them they discharged for around 4,000 hours in the last full year. Scorriton and Holne, both upstream on the moor, top that list.

The government’s target is that by 2050 no storm overflow should spill more than about ten times a year. In 2025, 41 of the 47 Dart overflows we can measure spilled more often than that, and 13 are spilling more often now than they did in 2020.

None of these numbers is secret. They come from data the regulators and the company already hold. What is missing is anyone putting them together in public, and a report like this one was the obvious place to start.

What we are adding to River Hub

The joint report does cover some things River Hub does not yet show, and we intend to add them. The first is pollution incidents. We want to show where incidents on the Dart happened, how serious they were, and whether South West Water reported them itself or someone else found them first. If nearly a third of the company’s incidents are found by other people, that tells you how much depends on people watching the river. The second is whether treatment works meet the numeric limits in their permits for what they release every day, which matters on the Dart because a treatment works discharges in dry weather as well as wet. We will also add a short company summary alongside the asset data, using the regulators’ own assessments, so readers can see both views together.

Why we cannot yet say which promised improvements were delivered

River Hub lists the 95 improvement, investigation and monitoring measures the Environment Agency has set for the Dart, each with a completion date. What it cannot show is whether a measure was actually delivered. That information is reported by South West Water to the regulator and scored, as this report shows, but it is not published action by action. Where a measure’s date has passed we can only show that the date has passed, not that the work was done.

The joint report proves the point. It tells us South West Water missed four actions, but not which four, or where. The only way to find out is to ask under the Environmental Information Regulations, or under the Freedom of Information Act where the information is held by the Environment Agency. We are asking South West Water which four actions were missed, whether any are on the Dart, and where every Dart action now stands. We will publish what we get back on River Hub. However, we should not have to do this. The regulator should make this information public.

What we want to see next year

We hope this becomes an annual report, and we think it can be much more useful. Next year we would like to see four things.

First, storm overflows, including emergency overflows, reported for every company, with spill counts, hours and dry-weather spills.

Second, the delivery of every environmental improvement action published individually, with its reference, its site, whether it was met, and the reason and new date for any that slipped.

Third, pollution incidents published with their location and category, and whether the company reported them itself.

Fourth, the data behind the report released as open data, so river groups like ours can see their own catchment without having to rebuild it from information requests.

The report says regulators carry out “transparent reporting” and that people “rightly expect swift action, honesty, accountability”. We agree. A company-level summary is a start, but accountability happens at the level of individual overflows and works, and that is the level the public needs to see. River Hub shows it can be done by volunteers with public data. The new regulator should be doing it as standard.

You can explore the Dart’s overflows, the improvement programme and the gaps at riverhub.friendsofthedart.org. With your support we can extend River Hub to cover the entire country, illustrating what we expect from the regulator. The full joint report is on our Resources page.