SEPA log thousands of complaints about state of Scottish waterways

Scottish Liberal Democrat leader Alex Cole-Hamilton has today piled pressure on the Scottish Government to take action to tackle sewage pollution in our rivers as he revealed figures showing a key regulatory agency has received thousands of complaints about waterways across the country.

A freedom of information request from Scottish Liberal Democrats asked for the number of complaints of sewage raised by members of the public since 2019. Due to a December 2020 cyber attack, SEPA were unable to provide this information. However they were able to provide data showing:

• In the first nine months of 2019, there were 1,048 complaints from the public about sewage in rivers. The areas which recorded the largest numbers of complaints were South Lanarkshire and Edinburgh & the Lothians.
• Between July 2022 and September 2023, another 1,051 complaints were logged by the environmental regulator across Scotland's nine recording regions.
• Between June 2021 and September 2023, 750 sewage incidents were logged in the Regulatory Activity Form (RAF). SEPA confirmed that the RAF most commonly represents individual events rather than the number of complaints received about an individual event. Therefore, the RAF recording system underrepresents the total number of sewage complaints received. The areas which recorded the largest numbers of complaints were Falkirk, Alloa, Stirling and Perth and Lanarkshire.

In 2022 Scottish Water figures show there was a 30% increase in the number of sewage overflow events. In total 14,008 discharges were logged, up from 10,799 incidents in 2021.

However there is reason to believe that this is a significant underestimate because only around 4% of the 3,614 sewage overflows in Scotland’s 31,000-mile sewer network are currently monitored. In Angus, Clackmannanshire, Dundee, East Lothian, Edinburgh, Inverclyde, Midlothian, Moray and South Ayrshire, no discharge points are monitored by Scottish Water, despite images emerging of sewage pouring into rivers.

Commenting on the figures, Alex Cole-Hamilton said:

“Scottish Liberal Democrats are determined to get to the bottom of Scotland’s sewage scandal.

“Only a tiny fraction of the network is currently monitored but public complaints can give us a more complete picture of how widespread this problem is.

“While our rivers, lochs and coastlines are destroyed, customers are facing bumper price rises from the government-owned water giant.

“To turn the tide on this scandal, Scottish Liberal Democrats have published plans for a Clean Water Act that would see vital updates to our sewage network and a clamp down on discharges.”