River Lim Action poo poo inaccurate sewage data
Latest data out from the Environment Agency on permitted sewage overflows in 2025 show that untreated sewage spilled into the River Lim, in Lyme Regis, for 660 hours (equivalent to nearly a month). That was down from 834 hours in 2024. But River Lim Action has uncovered inaccuracies in the data which make the results unreliable.
Vicki Elcoate, of River Lim Action, said: “although the annual report shows a decrease in discharges, it was a dry summer so that would be expected, and we are concerned about the accuracy of some of the data”.
The discharge point to the west of the Cobb – which is an indicator for the water quality on the designated for bathing Sandy Beach - spilled for 11 recorded hours in 2025, compared with 32 in 2024.
There were nearly 34 hours of spills into the River Lim, which affect water quality at designated for bathing Church Beach, during the bathing season (May – September).
River Lim Action has uncovered serious inaccuracies at the Mill Lane CSO in Uplyme. After pointing out it was discharging when nothing was being recorded South West Water admitted that data for the whole of 2025 for that CSO “is unrepresentative and inoperable, meaning that it cannot be compared to data produced in previous years.”
RLA has previously found inaccurate data at Jericho in Lyme Regis which was blamed on spiders.
South West Water’s Turning the Tide programme promises significant cuts to discharges by 2027.
“This can’t come soon enough” said Vicki Elcoate. “Horn Bridge and the Uplyme Sewage Treatment Works discharged for hundreds of hours between them. More storage and better separation of sewage and rainwater will make a big difference to the sewage pollution of our river and Church Cliff beach”.
Read more about our dodgy data investigation: https://www.turnlymegreen.co.uk/s/CSO-anomalies-March-2026.pdf
Source data available here https://environment.data.gov.uk/dataset/21e15f12-0df8-4bfc-b763-45226c16a8ac
Surfers Against Sewage’s research shows sewage alerts across all water company areas are already double this year over last year https://datahq.sas.org.uk/sewage-data-hq/