Thames Water fined record £20m for pumping sewage into rivers

Thames Water was fined a record £20m on Wednesday after pumping 1.4bn litres of raw sewage into the River Thames.

The judgement, ironically handed down on World Water Day, was delivered at Aylesbury Crown Court after a prosecution brought by the Environment Agency.

Privately-owned Thames was found guilty of devastating large sections of the river in Oxfordshire, Buckinghamshire and Berkshire, along with smaller tributaries, killing fish and birds.

Judge Francis Sheridan described the incident as “a shocking and disgraceful state of affairs”.

“It should not be cheaper to offend than to take appropriate precautions.”

“I have to make the fine sufficiently large that [Thames Water] get the message,” he said.

“One has to get the message across to the shareholders that the environment is to be treasured and protected, and not poisoned.”

It is not the first time the company has been punished for polluting the environment. In 2016 it received a £1m fine for releasing sewage into the Grand Union canal in Hertforshire and a further £0.38m for doing the same in an area of outstanding beauty in the Chilterns.

In the period 2005–13 Thames Water was the most heavily fined water company in the UK for pollution incidents, paying £842,500 for 87 events.

The company made an operating profit of £742m in 2015/16 and paid out £82m in dividends, according to its annual accounts.

It is owned by a group of institutional investors, including the BT pension fund, China Investment Corporation and Abu Dhabi Investment Authority, and was managed by Macquarie Capital Funds, which sold its final stake earlier in March to the Kuwaiti Investment Authority and Canadian pension fund Omers.