The stunning Cotswolds villages are blighted by sewage whenever it rains (Picture: Damien McFadden)
Living in the stunning village of Milton-under-Wychwood in the Cotswolds sounds like an idyllic fairytale life – but the dreams of its current residents have turned to nightmares.
The beautiful medieval village should provide an idyllic lifestyle for its residents, surrounded by untouched woodland and featuring a beautiful 19th century church, a gastropub, and stunning Milton Stone buildings.
But recently their lovely surroundings have been tainted by a near-constant stench of sewage.
Sophie Banks, who has lived in the village with her two children for more than a decade, says sewage gushes from manhole covers on the road close to her home.
Her 12- and 14-year-old children grew up walking around the corner to the local primary school, skimming stones on a nearby babbling brook, and building dens in the woods – but now they’re put off leaving the house.
Sophie, a 48-year-old administrator, said: ‘Whenever it’s wet, the sewage from thousands of nearby homes comes out of the manholes at the dip at the bottom of the road.
Thames Water is the local water and sewage company (Picture: Damien McFadden)
‘It spreads all over the pavement, where the children walk through the sticky goo in their school shoes and walk it straight into their classrooms.
‘Vehicles drive through it, spraying it all over the verge, a house and a service station, and what runs away goes straight into a stream that runs into the Littlestock Brook.
‘The smell is awful – I worry about what we’re breathing in, and what pathogens we touch on our footwear and vehicles.’
Sophie lives close to a Thames Water sewage treatment plant, but says the impact of continuous overflows, leaks and sewage spills into the nearby River Evenlode is ‘deeply unpleasant’.
The field adjacent to her house, where they keep sheep, chickens and bees, is littered with wet wipes, tampon applicators and disposable razors, scattered by birds who collect them from skips overflowing with putrid waste at the sewage plant.
This once-idyllic spot, described in a local Cotswolds guide as a ‘haven’ of ‘breathtaking serenity’, is facing a rising tide of sewage that is, literally, flooding the area.
According to the Thames Water live map, which tracks ‘discharges’ from storm overflows, there have been 2,345 hours – or 97 days – of sewage spillages into the village in the last six months.
And sadly Milton-under-Wychwood isn’t the only Cotswolds village facing regular sewage spills. Residents of Fairford and Bledington told MailOnline they see regular discharges, with residents even reporting raw sewage backing up through their shower plug holes.
Sewage bubbles up through manholes when it rains (Picture: Damien McFadden)
A bombshell report by the Environment Agency revealed that England’s water companies discharged sewage into waterways for a combined total of 3.61 million hours last year – the highest figures on record and double 2022’s figure.
But this sort of dumping is not technically illegal.
According to the water companies, they do it to prevent waste from flooding customers’ homes and gardens, while current government regulations permit overflows from storm drains in ‘exceptional circumstances’.
But critics argue these circumstances are now being invoked almost daily, far beyond the permits initially imposed to keep our waterways clean and unpolluted.
A Thames Water spokesman says: ‘We regard any untreated discharges as unacceptable, and we’re committed to stopping them from being necessary, with the assistance of our regulators.
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‘Storm discharges are closely linked to rainfall and groundwater conditions and our region experienced above average rainfall for most of 2023, which saw an increase in the frequency and duration of storm discharges from our sites compared to 2022.
‘The overflows are designed to operate automatically when the sewer network is about to be overwhelmed, by releasing diluted wastewater into rivers, rather than letting it back up into people’s homes.’
The spokesman adds that they have published plans to upgrade over 250 of their sewage treatment works and sewers.
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