What’s a Storm Overflow?
Storm Overflows (SOs) help protect homes, buildings, and land from flooding.
They're 'backup sewers', and collect overflowing stormwater when our normal sewers are overloaded due to heavy rainfall. Spills to environment contain mainly rainwater along with dilute sewage and are screened to remove debris.
Our SOs operate within the permits set by the Environment Agency and have been designed to provide excellent bathing water quality.
We voluntarily provide near real-time storm overflow spill information all-year-round, so people know if and when our bathing waters might be affected. Please note that a spill from a storm overflow doesn’t automatically affect seawater quality or impact the environment and there are other factors that can impact water quality too, such as agricultural and urban run-off, wildlife, rainfall and tidal conditions.