Thames Water has been given a one star rating for its poor environmental performance by the Environment Agency (EA) in 2024, as part of a scathing assessment of England’s water companies.
All but one of the nine English water and sewerage companies were rated as “requiring improvement” – or worse – by the EA, in a year where serious pollution rose by 60% versus 2023.
It is their worst combined score since the assessment process began in 2011.
Industry body Water UK acknowledged that “the performance of some companies is not good enough” but said there were some signs of improvement.
A Thames Water spokesperson said: “Transforming Thames is a major programme of work that will take time; it will take at least a decade to achieve the scale of change required.”
The chair of the EA, Alan Lovell, wrote: “Many companies tell us how focussed they are on environmental improvement. But the results are not visible in the data.”
The collective rating for 2024 was 19 stars – down from 25 stars in 2023. No year had previously got fewer than 22 stars.
Only Severn Trent got the top rating of four stars. All others got two stars, except Thames – the UK’s largest water company – which got one.
Thames Water has become mired in financial trouble. It reported a loss of £1.65bn for the year to March, while its debt pile climbed to £16.8bn.
Every year since 2011 each of England’s nine water companies have been given a rating for their environmental performance. Only seven one-star ratings have ever been previously given.
The EA says its assessment criteria has been tightened over time, so its ratings do “not mean performance has declined since 2011”.
The EA attributed last year’s poor performance to three factors – wet and stormy weather, long-standing underinvestment in infrastructure, and increased monitoring and inspection “bringing more failings to light”.
The water industry has faced mounting anger from customers and campaigners for rising bills and repeated sewage spills.
The Environment Agency reported in July that “serious” pollution incidents had increased by 60% in 2024 versus 2023.
And in April, bills rose by an average of 26% in England and Wales, after the economic regulator Ofwat approved water company plans for billions of pounds of investment.
Bills will continue to rise to 2030 to help upgrade water supplies and reducing the amount of sewage being spilled.
Earlier this year the government said that Ofwat would be scrapped and replaced by a single regulator.
That followed a landmark review of the “failing” water sector in England and Wales, which recommended stronger regulation to hold water companies to account.
But it warned that there would be no quick fixes to improve the state of our rivers or bring down bills.
In response to the EA’s report, James Wallace, chief executive of campaign group River Action UK, said: “Today’s report shows that water companies in England and Wales are still underperforming, especially on serious pollution incidents, exposing the bankruptcy of the privatised water model.
“We urgently need a complete overhaul of this failed system to ensure that bill payers receive a fair service and that our rivers are properly protected from pollution.”
Mike Keil, chief executive of the Consumer Council for Water, said: “Customers are now paying more than ever before through water bills and they will expect to see companies delivering on their promises to cut pollution and help bring rivers, lakes and wildlife habitats back to life.
“If the industry fails to deliver, the damage to public trust – which is already at an all-time low – may be unrecoverable,” he added.
Additional reporting by Jonah Fisher