Illegal misconnections of sewage pipes continue to be a ‘major source of seawater pollution’ in the town, Eastbourne MP told

Mrs Ansell met with the manager of the Southern Water’s misconnections team Robert Butson and bathing water quality specialist Ann Saunders.

The misconnections team detects where pipes have been illegally connected to the surface water system and then find the properties that are the cause of the pollution.

The MP said this work has already detected one misconnection in Grand Parade and Southern Water was on site earlier in May to fix it.

Mrs Ansell said that the pair also explained why Eastbourne’s seawater was downgraded from ‘good’ to ‘sufficient’, and how the data shows that the cause of this was down to misconnected pipes.

The Environment Agency (EA) samples seawater 24 times throughout the bathing season, and Eastbourne had six results that were not at the ‘excellent’ standard taken over four different dates, the MP added.

Mrs Ansell said all samples that were not at the 'excellent' standard were taken on days when it was impossible for them to be affected by a storm overflow due to the length of time that had passed since the most recent discharge.

Southern Water said the way forward is to invest in fixing existing assets such as leaking sewers and tracking down misconnections, according to the MP.

EA director Simon Moody added: “There is only one storm overflow in the vicinity of Eastbourne bathing water. It only discharged once last season and this did not coincide with a bathing water sample, so we are confident storm overflows did not impact last year’s results. The surface water outfall is only five metres from the water sample point.

"After rainfall, drainage from the urban area will flow to the beach. Roof and road drainage can be contaminated with faecal matter and any misconnections in the sewers will add to this faecal load. We are therefore focusing our investigations on the surface water outfall.

“In reality, there is unlikely to be a single significant misconnection that is polluting the bathing water but numerous small misconnections across the catchment (some may be intermittent as properties may only be used as holiday homes).”

Mrs Ansell said: “I will be content with nothing less than an excellent water quality rating for Eastbourne and problems must be fixed.

She added: “I will continue to raise all the questions – sometimes challenging ones – and hold all agencies, companies and authorities to account, especially around leaking sewers and misconnections.

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