Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask the Secretary of State for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs, for how many hours raw sewage was discharged into the River Ravensbourne in the London Borough of Havering in the first nine months of 2024.

There are no Combined Sewer Overflows or Sewage Treatment Works on the River Ravensbourne, meaning that no raw sewage has been discharged into the river from these types of assets.

However, the Environment Agency (EA) is aware of the issue of potential misconnections resulting in pollution discharges from private residences within the Ravensbourne area. Its area team will be investigating this matter further.

Thames Water provide data on storm overflow discharges data on storm overflow discharges in near real time on their website for their assets. The EA will publish the 2024 Event Duration Monitoring data, showing how long and how often storm overflows have been used, in March 2025. The data for previous years is available here.

The Government’s Water (Special Measures) Bill will require independent event duration monitoring of all sewage outlets, to support greater scrutiny of water company activity.