What's gone wrong with England's water? - podcast

More untreated sewage is being pumped into England's seas and rivers than ever before. Sandra Laville follows the money to find out who is responsibleBecky Malby lives in Ilkley, a town just south of York built around a waterway. It's an old Victorian spa town once famed for the quality of its waters. Not any more. Now untreated sewage spews into the water where children like to play in summer. It's becoming a familiar scene in England's seas and rivers.To understand how we got here, you need to look back to the privatisation of the water industry in the 1980s. As the environment correspondent Sandra Laville tells Nosheen Iqbal, decades of underinvestment have left England's waterways at the mercy of storm surges and other environmental factors. Meanwhile, billions of pounds are being paid out to shareholders of the companies responsible, many of which are based offshore and abroad. Continue reading...