Anglian Water's TV ad banned for failing to mention its record of releasing sewage into rivers

An Anglian Water advert has been banned for failing to mention its history of releasing sewage into rivers.

The TV ad was supposed to promote the water firm's building of wetlands, and featured a girl saying: “Right now, Anglian Water is creating wetlands to clean water using nature and make homes for wildlife.

“By building a really long pipe to bring water to places that need it most, while protecting nature too. And huge tanks to collect rain, so there’s less chance of floods in the future.

“In fact, everything they do today is for tomorrow.”

The ad showed wetland, fields and wildlife, tanks collecting rainwater, a wind turbine, and an Anglian Water van with text on the side that reads “100% Electric 0% Emissions”.

The Advertising Standards Authority received nine complaints that the ads were misleading because they did not mention how the firm had previously released sewage into rivers.

The Advertising Standards Agency said: “We accepted that Anglian Water were carrying out a number of activities that could have a positive impact on the environment.

“However, because they also carried out activities that caused harm to the environment, which contradicted the overall impression of the ad, we considered that was material information which should have been made clear in the ads.

“We concluded that the ads omitted material information and were therefore misleading.”

Anglian Water said it did not believe that the ad was misleading but apologised for "unintentionally" misleading customers.

A spokeswoman said: "We fully accept the ruling and took prompt action to remove the advert in line with the ASA’s guidance.

“We take our responsibility to protect and enhance the environment incredibly seriously and are investing almost £800m this year to address issues related to spills, preserve water resources and protect against severe weather and flooding.”

The firm claimed it had “an overwhelmingly positive impact on the environment”.

It said it did not “actively dump sewage into rivers and seas”, but discharged “highly diluted sewage” when storms happened, to avoid homes flooding.

It said this had a “negligible environmental impact on the receiving watercourse and was permitted by the Environmental Agency”.

Anglian Water was fined £2.6 million in April for discharging 7.5 million litres of sewage at Jaywick Water Reycling Centre in Essex in summer of 2018.

It was fined more than £500,000 for letting raw sewage spill into the River Great Ouse at Brackley in 2017. The pollution was found to have stretched seven miles (12km) down river, killing around 5,000 fish.

And it was fined a similar amount for pumping nearly four million litres of sewage into the River Wid in Essex, again killing thousands of fish.

In 2021 – the most recent year for which data was available – Anglian Water had an overall Environmental Performance Assessment (EPA) rating of two stars out of four. This means the “company requires improvement”.

The regulator did not uphold similar complaints about an ad from Severn Trent Water promoting its tree planting programme.

Although Severn Trent was fined for sewage discharges during 2018, the firm had a four-star EPA rating - meant that they were classed as an "industry-leading company".

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