Frome River has long been an outlet for storm overflows, when during storms, untreated sewage pours down the river banks as seen here in our video from last June.

The government says it is committed to ensuring that the system is not abused by water companies and in the Strategic Policy Statement, laid in Parliament in February, sets out to Ofwat - the water regulator - our expectations for the sector over the next five year spending cycle and beyond.

It makes clear that Ofwat and water companies should prioritise action on the environment, deliver a resilient and sustainable water supply, and significantly reduce the frequency and volume of discharges from storm overflows. We also recently consulted on our Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan, which will revolutionise how water companies tackle the number of discharges of untreated sewage.

The plan, according to the government press office, proposes the most significant infrastructure programme to recover the environment in water company history. Water companies will face strict limits on when they can use storm overflows and must completely eliminate the harm sewage discharges cause to the environment.

Water Minister Steve Double said:

We are the first government to take action to tackle sewage overflows. We have been clear that water companies' reliance on overflows is unacceptable and they must significantly reduce how much sewage they discharge as a priority.

This is on top of ambitious action we have already taken including consulting on targets to improve water quality which will act as a powerful tool to deliver cleaner water, pushing all water companies to go further and faster to fix overflows.

Work on tackling sewage overflows continues at pace and we will publish our plan in line with the 1 September statutory deadline.

The Environment Agency have also significantly driven up monitoring and report that they have:

• Increased the number of overflows monitored across the network from 800 in 2016 to more than 12,000 in 2020. All 15,000 overflows will have them by the end of 2023.
• Asked companies to install new flow monitors on more than 2,000 wastewater treatment works to identify what is happening at those works during the sewage treatment process itself. This has led to a major investigation, announced in November 2021, with the EA requesting more detailed data from all wastewater treatment works.
• Agreed to increase transparency around when and how storm overflows are used through the work of the Storm Overflows Taskforce – made up of Defra, the Environment Agency, Ofwat, Consumer Council for Water, Blueprint for Water and Water UK

The EA are monitoring the current situation and supporting local authorities where needed.