If the apology from the private water monopolies was intended to waft away the stink surrounding the issue of sewage in rivers and coastal areas, it doesn't seem to have worked.

An average of 824 discharges per day requires rather a fatberg of an apology.

The fact that their trade body Water UK has said that they are ready to spend £10bn tackling spills also drew criticism from campaign groups and the opposition. That's because households in England are going to pay for improvements via higher water bills.

Clean water activists including surfers, swimmers and anglers criticised water companies for passing the £10bn bill for investment, which should have been carried out years ago, on to customers.

Water companies in England have apologised for repeated sewage spills and pledged to invest £10bn this decade in an attempt to quell public anger over pollution in seas and rivers.

Water firms were fined just £10.5 million for sewage spills that killed tens of thousands of fish over seven years, while industry executives earned bonuses worth £30 million in two years.

Baroness Boycott asked whether national parks such as that surrounding Lake Windermere would have greater protection as a result of their status. She gave the example of “Windermere Lake, which is incredibly polluted at the moment, on a very bad level of people getting parasites – I know someone who had a three-week parasite” and added “does the fact you’re in a national park give you any greater protection over your water than we seem to have in other waterways?” She said that the parasite came directly from human sewage."

Matt Staniek is looking for volunteers to help him hold water companies to account.

The Save Windermere campaign and WildFish are looking for 20 volunteers to establish a SmartRivers monitoring hub, due to start on May 23-24. 

Two weeks before voters in parts of England and in Northern Ireland go to the polls to choose new councillors, those in office are swimming against a tide of public anger at water companies dumping untreated, raw sewage.

Most waste water travels to sewage works to be treated but under "exceptional circumstances", companies are allowed to pump the excess into the sea and rivers to prevent homes and roads being flooded with it.

However, EA figures show this is not occasional. Last year, sewage was pumped into England's waterways for a total of 1.75 million hours - 825 times a day on average.

The party plan to hold a binding vote on Tuesday to introduce a bill that would implement legally binding targets to reduce sewage dumping, and impose automatic fines.

Figures suggest 7,785 days’ worth of raw human sewage was dumped in Tory-held ‘red wall’ seats last year.

Analysis of Environment Agency data, broken down by constituency by campaign group Top of the Poops shows that in 2022, raw sewage was discharged into these ‘Red Wall’ seats for 186,861 hours, the equivalent of a continuous flow of sewage for a staggering 48 months.

Research also points to 35,219 sewage dumping events having taken place in ‘Red Wall’ constituencies last year. This equates to an average of 96 sewage dumps per day or a new sewage dump taking place every 14 minutes.

A new system will allow the levels of the harmful blue-green algae to be known in real time, letting wild swimmers and lake users know if it is safe to go into the waters.

Save Windermere have now started an £8,000 fundraiser to pay for the IO Light microscopes, which will be sold at a discounted price, and for the AI software by partners Bloom Optix which can identify the harmful cyanobacteria 'as well as a trained scientist'.

On Wednesday, the EA said its investigators had found that United Utilities had been spilling sewage from the local Cark pumping station into the river, even during periods of dry weather.

Water companies are allowed to spill sewage only under exceptional circumstances, when it is raining so heavily that the system cannot cope with the amount of water and effluent.

Listen to an interview with Matt on BBC Radio Cumbria about new campaign film and the Save Windermere’s demands to United Utilities.

An environmental campaigner who is protesting against sewage dumping by refusing to pay part of his water bill has accused his supplier of “attempting to shut him up” by paying him £75 in compensation.