In the summer of 1858, the centre of London was stuck in the chokehold of a smell so foul, the city’s residents thought it might cause cholera. Wafts of this pungent, bitter stench had descended on the city, and as a result the capital had almost ground to a halt. The smell was so bad that the curtains in the House of Commons were doused in chloride of lime to help MPs and their staff to actually concentrate on lawmaking.
The Great Stink, as it has since come to be known, was a disgusting natural phenomenon in which that summer’s hot weather exacerbated the inescapable smell of untreated human waste and industrial chemicals that had seeped onto the banks of the Thames. The centre of London being thrown into chaos by the inexorable stench of human excrement that summer could have been avoided. It was largely down to the capital’s ageing and inadequate sewage system emptying directly into the famous river, and the episode led to a major upgrade of the wastewater network led by the engineer Joseph Bazalgette.
This well-known anecdote was used this week by the newly minted environment secretary Steve Reed to set the scene for a new regulatory regime to crack down on the nation’s water bosses. Of the many issues currently facing the UK, the presence of poo-in-rivers consistently comes up as one of the most pressing. The renewed popularity of the former Undertones frontman Feargal Sharkey (who was spotted by a Green Transition reporter on the tube this week) and his “Stop the S*** show” campaign, speaks to the salience of the issue.
And the public are right to be angry. According to the Environment Agency, in 2023 alone, there were a combined total of 3.6m hours of sewage spills into UK rivers and seas, in comparison to 1.75m hours in 2022. Water UK, the industry body representing water companies described this uptick as “unacceptable” but blamed the increase on increased rainfall across the British isles. (Our ace colleague, the New Statesman’s business editor Will Dunn, wrote an excellent New Statesman cover story on how we got into this mess in the first place, which you can read here.)
Despite this, water company bosses have continued to be paid eyewatering bonuses on top of their equally eyewatering salaries. For example, Chris Weston, the chief executive of Thames Water was paid an £195,000 bonus last year, on top of a £437,000 annual salary, all while sewage has continued to pour into Britain’s most famous river.
So, in a speech on Thursday (5 September), to the Thames Rowing Club, Reed set out how he plans to crack down on these injustices. Under new laws set out by the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, as part of the Water (Special Measures) bill, water company bosses who oversee failure will be banned from receiving bonuses and may be made criminally liable if they obstruct water inspections by the Environment Agency. The bill will lower the burden of proof in civil cases to allow the Agency to more easily bring cases against bosses whose companies have failed to sort the problem out. Reed said he hopes this will “focus them on cleaning up our rivers and not lining their pockets”.
But while the proposals may seem radical (in the case of potential prison sentences), Reed’s new bill has been dubbed “window dressing” by some campaigners. They have pointed out that despite Reed’s proposed crackdown, there has already been extensive rule-breaking across the water sector, and have argued that this is down to the failure of Ofwat (the water regulator) and the Environment Agency to ensure already-existing rules and regulations are properly enforced.
Others in the sector have welcomed the moves with open arms. Richard Benwell, the chief executive of Countryside and Wildlife Link said the new bill “shows real steel from the government” and called for this “no-nonsense, polluter pays approach” to be applied across government.
Still, with a struggling court system and prisons which are currently full to the brim, it is hard to imagine that we will see many CEOs behind bars. But perhaps, even with the unlikely threat of time inside hanging over them, at least some of the UK’s water bosses will get their s*** together and prevent us from suffering through yet another great stink.
This article was originally published as an edition of the Green Transition, New Statesman Spotlight’s weekly newsletter on the economics of net zero. To see more editions and subscribe, click here.
Content from our partners
Related
