Residents of Lord Street Fleetwood have been in touch with me to report a large amount of sewage that was left along the pavement, outside peoples homes and businesses, after United Utilities had been out to clean a drain.

I have reported this to the Chief Executive for  United Utilities North West to ask them to review this matter and explain why it was thought appropriate to leave the pavement in this state and to provide assurance that it will not happen again in the future.

This is incredibly disappointing to see and shows utter disregard for local residents and businesses owners. Sadly, it is not surprising to see United Utilities acting in such a poor manner as residents here have also been plagued by the odour which is routinely and increasingly common as a result of the raw sewage processing and dumping by United Utilities out of their Wastewater Treatment Works centre on Jameson Road.

Just as recently as December the Government were still voting against Labour’s plans to stop water companies dumping raw sewage, but as a Party we were successful in voting through a ban on bonuses for water bosses – something the Government has stubbornly refused to do. You can read more on that here.

A recent BBC Panorama exposé on United Utilities uncovered some shocking testing and dumping practices, including in Fleetwood, which I immediately followed up with the Environment Secretary, in a letter which you can read here.

In my role on the Environment, Food and Rural Affairs Committee, I challenged the water regulator Ofwat on why they are so useless, and although the committee is yet to bring United Utilities to the table which I hope they will, I was pleased to ask Thames Water why they and other water companies treat their customers so poorly.

In Parliament, with water bills going up, water bosses bonuses going up, and levels of sewage dumped in our water going up, I asked the Government why they are also not fixing the problem, but specifically to Fleetwood, last September I challenged the then-Environment Secretary Thérèse Coffey on the issue at Fleetwood, who said we should give credit to United Utilities, for fixing the broken pipe in Fleetwood they failed to invest in for decades – and put up our bills to fund!

I have an ongoing petition which I encourage people to sign, to show the strength of feeling to United Utilities that this isn’t right. You can find this at www.catsmith.co.uk/sewage, and you can also find the local Labour action by Cllr Lorraine Beavers and others to stop this from happening here.