As a company, we are passionate about the environment. We have a strong track record protecting and enhancing our environment and are known to be leaders in this area.
Our 2024 environmental performance has unfortunately dropped to a two-star status in the Environment Agency’s assessment, published on 23 October 2025, and while we are disappointed with this result, we are pleased to remain in the top three performing companies and have been rated highly in a number of measures – including high marks for self-reporting pollution incidents, demonstrating transparency and proactive management of issues.
As well as this, in the Performance Assessment, we also scored 100% for our Asset Management Plan – which means that all planned work was delivered on time.
The assessment results also show that we have yet again had no serious pollutions over the past 12 months, and haven’t since 2021.
Environmental Performance Assessment 2024
The drop in performance is a result has stemmed from power failures at pumping stations, often due to weather-related power supply interruptions, and we are already carrying out investments and improvement plans at affected sites, with some already completed.
There is always room for improvement both within our company, and also across the industry – which is why we have been focusing on using innovative new methods and ideas to help us to do even better next year.
These include a smart sewer network to reduce storm overflows, using AI technology to improve the quality of rivers, using drones to measure water quality, treating green ammonia into fuel, and using pipe-robots to inspect the health of our assets.
Between 2020 and 2025 we have been investing over £80m to reduce our use of storm overflows and to upgrade our wastewater network, which will be followed by a further £1.7 billion from 2025 to 2030 in a massive environmental programme to stop storm overflow spills and help improve the environment.
While we are disappointed with our scores, we will continue to focus on getting even better for our customers.