Council backs replacing South West Water with a publicly owned company

Cornwall Council has voted overwhelmingly to declare no confidence in South West Water and is calling for the company to be replaced by a publicly owned organisation to manage the county's water and wastewater services. Read more from the Local Democracy Reporter Service...

Following an often angry and passionate debate, members of Cornwall Council have declared a vote of no confidence in South West Water (SWW) and called for the company to be removed from managing Cornwall’s water and sewage works in favour of a publicly owned organisation.

Today’s motion noting SWW’s “grave failure” to manage the sewage system in Cornwall came after around 60 of the Duchy’s town and parish councils, representing well over half of the people of Cornwall, put their weight behind a cross-party campaign, Dowr Glan, which means Clean Water in Cornish.

There is growing anger that despite record bills and government intervention, raw sewage continues to impact Cornwall’s environment and public health.

Green Party councillor Dean Evans told the chamber: “We are asking members to take a step towards ensuring that the money we pay through our water bills is invested in waste water infrastructure rather than shareholder returns and executive rewards.

“We are asking Government to return the water industry to public management.”

Liberal Democrat councillor Rosie Moore said: “Whatever members’ views on the best model, I hope we’re united in wanting to end SWW’s failures.”

Cllr Paul Ashton, leader of the Reform UK group, said his members were 100% behind the motion of no confidence, but felt that the question of returning the operation of Cornwall’s water and sewage works to public ownership was premature.

In a speech which gained a round of applause from across the chamber, Cllr Drew Creek – the leader of the Greens on Cornwall Council and Mayor of Newquay – said: “Trust is what this motion is about and SWW has broken it again and again and again.

“In 2025 162 hours of sewage was discharged in a single year at Fistral. By SWW’s own figures, their two overflows there spilled 70 times last year when they had promised us ten. That’s seven times over their own word; a promise broken in plain sight.”

He added that volunteers were now testing water – a job that should be done by a company making millions, which he said was a “disgrace”.

“I gave SWW more trust than most. In 2023 I, as Mayor of Newquay, took the town into the first partnership of its kind anywhere in the UK – the first between a council and a water company. I believed their promises and they failed to deliver. I handed them my town’s trust and they spent every last penny of it.

“I have no trust left to give – our water, our coast and our economy belong in public hands.”

Independent councillor Julian German demonstrated the strength of support at Lys Kernow (County Hall) for the move: “This is a cross-party motion and indeed a no-party motion.” He thanked Mael Garrec, a Mebyon Kernow town councillor in Penryn and the town’s deputy mayor, for launching the Dowr Glan campaign.

While thanking SWW staff on the ground who are working to improve things, Lib Dem councillor Ruth Gripper said there was “clearly a problem” at corporate level.

“Eight of the ten constituencies in England with the most hours of sewage dumped in 2025 are in the SWW area, customer bills are going up and Susan Davy [the outgoing chief executive of Pennon Group, the owner of South West Water] got a £270,000 bonus for last year when you’re seeing sewage on the streets in Stithians and cryptosporidium in drinking water in Brixham,” she added.

Conservative councillor Rob Parsonage warned that taxes would go up if the water utility was nationalised. He said the debate about the performance of SWW should not be conflated with the separate question of public ownership. He believed members should have been given the opportunity to vote on both issues separately.

“This is not about the employees and the people that work for SWW,” said the council’s Lib Dem leader Cllr Leigh Frost. “They do not wake up in the morning and say ‘I cannot wait to screw over the people of Cornwall’. They want to provide good services for the people that they serve.

“It is a problem with the model and it is not for us to define what model that should be.” He thanked Mebyon Kernow councillor Loveday Jenkin – who presented the motion – for suggesting that the Government could consider a number of options of how it could be operated.

Cllr Jenkin finished the debate by saying that “on behalf of the people of Cornwall we need to be telling the Government that we are sick of just being fed a line and then it not being delivered”.

Members voted almost unanimously in favour of the following recommendations:

1.That council notes with grave concern the systemic failure of South West Water to manage the sewage system in Cornwall.

2. That council resolves:

a. To formally declare a vote of no confidence in South West Water.

b. To instruct the leader to write to both the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs (DEFRA) and the Chief Executive of Ofwat to inform them of the no confidence vote, and to petition for the Government and Ofwat to remove SWW from the management of the Cornish water and waste water systems and transfer the ownership and management to a publicly owned organisation, run as a public service. The letter should also request that,

(i) as part of any future reform, consideration be given to a public benefit company model, under which financial surpluses are reinvested into water and wastewater infrastructure and services rather than distributed as shareholder dividend;

(ii) the Government publish the legal route, anticipated timetable, financial implications and arrangements required to protect customers, employees, infrastructure investment and continuity of service;

(iii) immediate enhanced regulatory intervention and a published Cornwall-specific improvement plan while that transfer is being developed.

c. To instruct the leader to write to South West Water requesting that, within three months, it establishes and maintains a publicly accessible online Cornwall Water Performance Dashboard.