Six of ten highest sewage dischagers in England are in Cumbrian rivers, new figures show

Six of the ten highest dischargers of sewage into English rivers last year were in Cumbria.

New figures have highlighted concerns about the amount of untreated sewage in the county's waterways.

The Environment Agency identified the village of Cark-in-Cartmel as a place where the water company has breached its environmental permit.

The village stream had sewage running through it for half of every day on average last year.

One resident said: "We have children in and out of this river regularly. Personally, I'm not happy about my dog going in the river, and that's what we've had to live with for some years now."

A spokesperson for The Environment Agency said: "We are holding the industry to account on a scale never seen before. We have significantly driven up monitoring and transparency from water companies in recent years, including increased scrutiny at this site.

"We have been working hard to ensure United Utilities is making appropriate progress."

Simon Holding from United Utilities said: "We absolutely don't want to see this happening either. And and even though what is obviously being discharged is is mostly groundwater, it absolutely shouldn't be in the sewer.

"A number of projects are already underway, so we're actually installing a number of dynamic network monitors, relining certain areas of the sewer network and that will have a positive impact and reduce the number of spills from sites."

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