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.
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”.
