Our £450m plan to reduce spills

We have announced an industry leading plan to deliver storm overflow solutions across 900 of our sites across the Midlands this year.

This work is in addition to existing work to boost river health and improve our wastewater network, as part of a £450m investment.

We’ve both increased and accelerated investment behind our storm overflow spill reduction plan after receiving an additional £1 billion of funding from our investors in late 2023, enabling us to do more, faster.

Following extensive work to test and trial solutions, our 300 strong team are now installing c.1,000 capital schemes which, once finished, will see a reduction in spills of 20% per year.

We have 2,472 storm overflows, more than any other water company given our region does not have a coastline, around 350 of which have not spilled in the last year.

We have recently launched a storm overflow map which is a great tool for people to see what investment plans are taking place on all storm overflows across the region, and as schemes progress we’ll be sharing more detail on what action is planned for each overflow.

We have been recognised as an industry leader when it comes to environmental performance, achieving the Environment Agency’s highest four-star rating for four years running. And we’re confident of securing this for an unprecedented fifth year later in July 2024.