Pollution jumped 72% in a year to its worst level since 2011. Bills are up more than a third in two years, and the company admits customers, not shareholders, will fund most of its £8.3bn fix.

Yorkshire Water has crashed to the lowest rating the Environment Agency can give after polluting the region’s rivers more often than at any time since 2011.

The regulator today cut the firm from two stars to one, branding it a “poor performing company”. It caused 260 pollution incidents in 2025, up 72% on the year before, and missed deadlines on six environmental schemes in west Leeds.

You’re paying for the fix

The firm is spending £8.3bn by 2030, including £1.5bn on storm overflows, the pipes that pour diluted sewage into rivers during heavy rain. It admits customers, not shareholders, are paying for most of it.

Average bills rose about 30% in April 2025 and another 5.6% this April. Ofwat has ordered the firm to hand £75m back through lower bills next year after it missed targets on pollution and leaks.

What it means for South Yorkshire

Barnsley’s rivers took the worst of it. Storm overflows in the borough released sewage 2,580 times in 2025, for 15,614 hours, according to Environment Agency figures compiled by Open Govt.

Rotherham’s overflows, some run by Severn Trent, spilled for 12,737 hours. Sheffield logged 9,678 hours but the most individual spills, at 2,892. The River Don was hit 2,489 times, Top of the Poops data shows.

That was in a dry year, when spills fell by around a third across England.

In April the EA secured £2.35m from Yorkshire Water after a string of pollution incidents in South Yorkshire rivers. The same month, sewage entered a Sheffield river less than 48 hours before a children’s Easter duck race in Endcliffe Park.

What South Yorkshire’s politicians say

Sheffield Central MP Abtisam Mohamed says regulation and fines have failed and “Only public ownership will fix it.”

Sheffield Hallam MP Olivia Blake has called a public meeting on the company’s failures, questioning whether privatisation is fit for purpose.

Rawmarsh and Conisbrough MP John Healey has called sewage dumping across South Yorkshire “a stain on our local environment.”

South Yorkshire mayor Oliver Coppard joined Yorkshire’s other mayors in condemning undisclosed payments to Shaw as “wholly unacceptable.”

Sheffield councillor Minesh Parekh wants the company brought under public control, describing it as “emblematic of the failure that is privatised water.”