The Marine Conservation Society (MCS) has now joined as a co-claimant in the Good Law project’s legal case to protect coastal waters from sewage.

In a statement, MCS said: “We’re taking legal action against the UK Government as a result of their failure to address the sewage pollution scandal facing English shores. 

Spills of untreated sewage into rivers and seas from so-called storm overflows have become a standard news item and seem to have hit a new high in the last year. 

Our research shows that there are 1,651 storm overflows within 1km of a Marine Protected Area in England, spilling sewage into the sea for a shocking 263,654 hours – the equivalent of 30 years – in 2021. 

We are suing the Secretary of State for the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs for not taking effective action on sewage pollution entering our seas. We’ve not taken this step lightly.”

The Good Law Project is supporting co-claimants Marine Conservation Society, Richard Haward’s Oysters and surfer and activist, Hugo Tagholm, as they take this case forward to compel the Government to rewrite its Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan.

The Good Law Project said in a statement: ‘The claim has now been filed and the next step is to take this issue to the courts to compel the Government to impose much tougher deadlines on water companies and expand its plan to specifically address sewage spillages into coastal waters.’

See the MCS website here for details of their involvement in the legal case. For further information on the claim see the Good Law Project website here.