Unless you've been living under a rock for the past few years, you'll be well aware of the scandal of water companies pumping raw, untreated sewage into British waterways on an industrial – and illegal– scale.
When sewage works become overwhelmed during periods of exceptionally heavy rainfall, operators are legally permitted to release waste into our rivers and seas – but only then – and they must report that to the Environment Agency (EA).
Yet, as Channel 4’s Dirty Business spotlights, not only are the water companies failing to tell the regulator – it's also happening year-round, even when there's been no rain at all.
In fact, the series reveals there were nearly one million sewage dumps in 2024 alone. That's one every 30 seconds.
It is a national disgrace which has entered the public consciousness in no small part thanks to campaigners Peter Hammond and Ashley Smith, played by Jason Watkins and David Thewlis respectively.
After becoming neighbours, the academic and former police detective joined forces to investigate what was really going on when they noticed the River Windrush – which runs underneath Peter's home, a converted mill in the Cotswolds – had changed colour.
What has emerged is "one of the biggest potential corporate scandals in British history", according to writer and director Joseph Bullman – and one that is having a devastating impact on our wildlife and our health.
If Peter and Ash's crusade is the brain of Dirty Business, Heather Preen's story is the heart. She was eight years old when she died after being infected by e-coli 0157 in 1999.
Two weeks prior, she had been on a beach in Devon with her family when she fell into a pool of water which her family alleged had toilet paper floating in it. Heather soon became dangerously ill and her health deteriorated rapidly.
"I don't think I realised that it got to the point of people losing their lives because you assume as a lay person that things could not be allowed to get that bad," Tom McKay, who plays Heather's dad Mark, told Radio Times.
"I genuinely thought it can't possibly be that bad, and it clearly is."
Bullman has woven Heather’s tragedy and the meticulous work of Peter and Ash into a compelling, deeply emotive three-part factual drama.
"He’s managed to distil all this incredible information that Ash and Peter put together and make it not a documentary," said McKay.
"If you’re making a TV drama, then you absolutely have to be invested in the individuals and follow their stories. You need to marry those mind-blowing facts alongside the human stories. And that’s what Joe’s done really, really well – because in the wrong hands, it could just be like a lecture, and you would switch off."
For more about the true stories that inspired Channel 4's Dirty Business, read on.
Dirty Business true story
"I have played real people before, but not where the story was quite as traumatic as this, and where the subject matter is so inflammatory," said McKay.
"I've never been so angry and upset reading a script. I read it on a plane and I honestly think the person next to me thought they needed to call for some help.
"There was quite a long time after the show where I couldn't really talk about it without crying.
"The roots go so deep... it sort of did something physical to me."
Mark, his wife Julie (played by Posy Sterling) and their two daughters, 10-year-old Suzanne and their youngest, Heather, had travelled from Birmingham to Dawlish Warren, Devon – where they'd also stayed five years earlier – for a holiday.
As Julie explains in Dirty Business, they had chosen that particular beach for its Blue Flag status – which is supposedly awarded to those with high water quality.
But Heather slipped into a putrid pool of water next to a sewage outlet after trying to jump over it and in the days that followed, she suffered from explosive diarrhoea and bleeding from her rectum.
She was eventually taken to a local hospital where she began fitting, before being transferred to a children's hospital and placed on a ventilator.
At some point during that period, the tests came back positive for e-coli 0157 – for which there is no cure. And while a lot of people do recover, Heather didn’t
Her brain lost its ability to control her vital organs and they began to fail. In the end, the only option left was to switch off Heather's life support.
What happened to Heather and the pain her immediate family and those around them endured was a "hideous tragedy", said McKay.
"Then everything that happens afterwards, all this stuff that they were subjected to was just so unnecessary and just added a wild insult to injury. Tragedy almost doesn't feel like a big enough word."
During the inquest scene in the drama, Chris Hines, co-founder of Surfers Against Sewage, said that in the days leading up to the Preens' visit, the EA had received "at least 14 complaints about sewage on the beach".
A GP, a microbiologist, council workers and members of the public – we're told at least six other children, including a seven-month-old baby, were infected with the E. coli virus after being at the beach that day – all give evidence about "big influxes of sewage debris on the beach".
But South West Water and the EA have denied responsibility for Heather's death – or any of those other cases.Ahead of the release of Dirty Business, a South West Water spokesperson told Radio Times: "We haven't yet been given access to review the programme, so can't comment on what will be aired in connection with Heather's death in 1999. However, the tragic death of a child is devastating and our thoughts remain with the family affected."The bathing water at Dawlish Warren was tested as part of the investigations at the time by EA and samples were clear of E. coli."
They added: "The loss of a child is devastating and we recognise the lasting impact this has had on those closest to her. At the time, there was an extensive and multi-agency investigation involving public health authorities, the Environment Agency and other relevant bodies.
"The Outbreak Control Team (OCT) report concluded that, despite intensive investigations, no cause for the outbreak was identified. The inquest documentation confirms that no definitive source of infection was established. The inquest report also noted that E. coli O157 is a bacteria commonly carried by animals, particularly cattle and dogs.
"More than 100 environmental and sewer samples were taken as part of the investigation. The specific strain of E. coli involved in the case was not identified in samples taken from the sewer network.
"Despite the thorough and intensive nature of the investigation, no sufficient evidence was found linking the illness to storm overflow activity or bathing water quality.
"The circumstances of wastewater infrastructure and regulation in the late 1990s were very different from today. Since then, significant investment, including through the Clean Sweep programme - which put waste treatment in fort the first time in Dawlish after decades without it.
"We understand that the revisiting of historic events through dramatisation can raise difficult questions. It is important that any discussion reflects the findings of the formal investigations carried out at the time. Our focus remains on protecting public health, safeguarding bathing waters and continuing to improve environmental performance."
In the drama, a representative from the EA says of the 45 samples taken from the waters around Dawlish, only two came back positive, while a Chief Scientist for South West Water blames dog poo on one specific area of the beach.
But the infected families were on different parts of the beach that day, while the microbiologist representing them also explains that the agency's tests were carried out a full month after Heather had visited that beach.
In the end, a jury returned a verdict of death by misadventure.
"In that inquest, they kind of tried to put it on them, particularly Mark," said McKay.
“One thing Julie said to me is when they put him on the stand, they really cross-examined him. They said all that stuff about fast food [contaminated food, such as raw leafy vegetables or undercooked meat, can put people at risk of E. coli] and dog poo and all this stuff, the implication always being trying to make it look like it was their fault, which, of course, is essentially making them feel like bad parents.
"And one thing I can say with absolute authority, having never met Mark [he fell into depression and died by suicide in 2016], and I've only met Julie a couple of times, is they are incredible parents and very, very, very good people."
McKay described Julie as having "lion-hearted courage and intelligence".
“She's [now] a Hyrox champion and you're like, of course you are," he smiled. "She just has this tenacity, but also this gorgeous self-effacement.
"And she was so incredible. In the midst of what had happened to her, she had the intelligence and the poise to be an activist, essentially, and to go, 'This needs to stop happening, that beach needs to be shut, and we need to get to the bottom of this,' because she didn't want there to be any more Heathers. And there may have been loads of other Heathers that we just don't know about.
"There might be right now, and there could still be in the future."
In the wake of Heather's death, Julie has raised awareness and funds for Kidney Research UK and Surfers Against Sewage. She's part of a wider movement working to keep Britain's waterways clean and safe, at the forefront of which are Peter and Ash.
Their story doesn't cross paths with Heather's in Dirty Business, but they are tied to her, as we all her, by what is happening to our rivers and seas.
Peter is a retired professor of computational biology, who first moved to his Cotswolds home around 2002.
"Right from the word go, we put camera traps in the garden to see what was there, and we'd get everything," Peter told Radio Times. "We had badgers, otters, foxes, deer, all the birdlife – you name it – because of the water. Lots of swans every year. We have a little island and the swans would build their nests.
"We also started doing surveys of water voles for the Wildlife Trust – I think we've been doing it for 15 years. So we were looking at nearby rivers too, and we knew what state they were in. Our river was brilliant when we first moved here. It was clean, full of ranunculus – that green weed that sways in the current with white flowers on top. It was beautiful.
"It was kind of idyllic, really. And then gradually, we lost the biodiversity."
Peter first met Ash, a former detective who used to "investigate crime by the police" – the real-life AC-12, if you will – around 2007/8 when he moved "diagonally opposite, we're 50 yards apart".
"And because he'd done fishing and scuba diving, he knew more about what a river should look like, and he thought there was something wrong."
So, Ash began "pestering the Environment Agency and Thames Water", who would send him data, and lots of it.
"He didn't know what to do with it," added Peter, which is where Peter came in.
He'd spent 20 years at the Institute of Child Health specialising in artificial intelligence and image analysis to identify differences in brain and facial shape associated with prenatal alcohol exposure and genetic disorders.
And central to that was a 3D camera that was "as big as a Dalek".
"I had to hire a van with a tail lift to take it to places," he chuckled. "And then gradually they got smaller and smaller, and now it's an iPhone."
The team developed software to analyse 3D facial scans, which they applied to profile images from prenatal ultrasound scans, which is all very impressive. But what's even more remarkable was how Peter repurposed that technology to uncover what the water companies were doing.
"I realised a facial profile is just like the way sewage moves through treatment works – it's essentially a 2D curve," he explained. "So I transformed that flow into a 3D ribbon and ran the same software over it."
Peter makes it all sound so simple, although he accepts the AI algorithms they use are "sophisticated".
What wasn't sophisticated, however, was the data they were being supplied with from the water companies.
"One thing that shocked me was just how shoddy it was. I've supervised PhD students and if they'd come to me with data like that, I'd have said go away because that's rubbish”
While Peter had no idea just how desperate the situation was when he first noticed the colour of the River Windrush, that quickly changed when he had hard data in front of him.
"These aren’t accidents, Ash. It's policy,” says Peter in a scene from Dirty Business, set in 2019. It had become impossible to deny: the water companies were repeatedly and deliberately breaching their permits – "which means they're breaking the law".
In the nine years for which he had data at just two sewage works – there are around 9,000 wastewater treatment works in the UK – they had dumped raw sewage "a thousand times".
"I said it’s 10 times worse than the Environment Agency thinks," Peter recalled while giving evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee in 2021.
From wading in the river to submitting evidence to the Environmental Audit Committee – "a lot happened over lockdown. What else was there to do but to kind of hammer away the data?" he said while the rest of us were making sourdough starters and watching Tiger King – Peter and Ash are, in many ways, real-life superheroes.
Of course Peter laughed that off.
"There are lots of people doing what we do," he said, downplaying his role. “We just got in early and were the first to tackle the data."
They even persuaded the former CEO of Ofwat to attend their charity cricket match.
"A little village – and she came. Can you imagine? I've got pictures of me walking around the cricket pitch with great big charts, pointing at them."
Peter said he doesn't like the word "journey", but concedes there's no better word for it.
"We could never have imagined that from one small hamlet of 26 people, we'd find ourselves in the High Court."
When Thames Water went to the High Court last year to secure emergency funding and avoid collapse, Peter and Ash intervened to represent customers. Whatever the challenge, they have risen to it – because as the website for their campaign group, Windrush Against Sewage Pollution (WASP), puts it simply: 'It doesn't have to be like this.'
So, what can be done?
"If you're looking for an overnight change, there isn't one," said Peter matter-of-factly. "But the one change that we all believe in, the groups that we mix with, is to remove the profit motive.
"In the end, the danger is that they're no longer doing a service, giving us clean water, cleaning our sewage and returning it safely to the environment. They're just about making money. You've got these hedge funds [like the Australia-based Macquarie Group, which led the consortium that owned Thames Water from 2006 to 2017] and others loaning the water companies money and earning interest from it, so that the loaned money can go to the shareholders and not to invest in the infrastructure."
Thames Water is currently owned by Kemble Water Holdings Limited, which is in turn owned by a group of institutional investors, including pension funds and sovereign wealth funds.
"There's plenty enough coming into Thames Water to cover all the day-to-day costs," added Peter. "But they're not playing that game. They're playing another game – where they're trying to earn money for the shareholders. And analysis has been done that's shown shareholders have never put in more than they've taken out — what comes into the water companies is from the customers."
A Thames Water spokesperson told Radio Times that they "have not seen the Dirty Business series but Thames Water is a company that takes its responsibilities to customers and the environment extremely seriously".
The statement continued: "Thames Water believes in transparency. In January 2023 we were the first water company to publish a real-time map showing our discharges into rivers. We also work proactively and constructively with community groups across our area. This includes WASP, for whom we have hosted visits to and provided information about multiple sites, including Burford Sewage Treatment Works, where we installed a webcam in 2021 providing WASP with full access to allow them to monitor flows.
"We understand that all untreated discharges, even when storm overflows are permitted under the conditions of an Environment Agency Permit, are unacceptable, however it’s important to remember the sewage system was historically designed this way to prevent sewage backing up into people's homes.
"Taking action to improve the health of our rivers is a key focus for us and that is why, over the next five years, we are delivering the most significant upgrade to the wastewater network in 150 years. This includes increasing treatment capacity, reducing storm discharges, and introducing new nutrient‑reduction schemes."
Elsewhere, Peter acknowledges, it's not quite as simple as removing the profit margins.
"You need much stronger regulation," he reiterates. "The regulators are still playing catch-up, really, and the water companies will continue to make large profits unless the government intervenes" – something he alleges they are reluctant to do for fear of "frightening off investors".
In a statement, a spokesperson for the Environment Agency Radio Times said their sympathies were with the family of Heather Preen and added: "Dirty Business raises important issues about water quality, the actions of water companies and regulation of the sector over recent decades".
They continued: "Our priority is always to protect the environment for people and wildlife, and the organisation has undergone significant changes in recent years to better tackle water pollution. More people, better data and increased powers mean we will always act on intelligence of potential offences.
"This year we are on track to do 10,000 inspections of water company assets, rooting out wrongdoing and driving better performance. Since 2015 we have concluded 69 prosecutions against water and sewerage companies securing fines of over £153 million."
With all of that to contend with, does Peter ever get downbeat?
"I occasionally express doubt about what's going on," he said calmly. It's hard to imagine Peter losing his temper, despite working at the coalface. "You get disillusioned now and then, definitely. One of the things that has upset us is seeing kids looking into the river and thinking that’s just what a river looks like: brown, murky, not many fish. They don’t know what it was like 15 or 20 years ago. And that’s a shocking shame – never mind the health issues.”
Peter discussed testing samples from the Oxford sewage works and finding strong evidence of E coli "which is resistant to current drugs. That's going into the environment".
Dirty Business makes for exceptionally grim, shocking viewing – but does Peter think it can have the same impact as Mr Bates vs The Post Office, which reinvigorated the fight for justice for those affected by the Post Office scandal – including securing compensation, overturning criminal convictions and stripping the former CEO of her CBE?
"The Post Office thing was a terrible scandal. People went to prison, people took their own lives, people's health was damaged. But the amount of money was not on the scale of this," cautioned Peter. "80 billion pounds has been transferred to shareholders. They [the water companies] are 70 odd billion in debt."
McKay said that while there are "lots of parallels" between the two scandals, there's one key difference.
"We need water to survive – and it's been commodified. There is an element of profiteering that is putting us all at risk. And we should all be a lot angrier."
But it did move Peter, who really has seen it all – "I definitely had tears in my eyes in that first episode" – and he has high hopes those watching will experience similar emotions, before their despair turns to anger.
"And then they'll start shouting at their MPs: you got into our constituency by campaigning on clean rivers and sewage, and we thought, yeah, we'll vote for you — and now you’ve got to stand up."
McKay also hopes that people will experience an "inferno of rage alongside the tears".
"It's entirely appropriate to be upset, people should be because of what Heather and her family went through. But you also need the rage, a kind of useful rage.
"One of Julie's fears was that Heather would just be forgotten. But I suppose that’s part of the potency of TV drama. It can be the fuel in the engine that you need to light things up and raise awareness.
"It’s not glib and it's not trivial – it can be an incredibly useful tool, a sort of great weapon in their arsenal."
Dirty Business debuts on Channel 4 on Monday 23 February.
Check out more of our Drama coverage or visit our TV Guide and Streaming Guide to find out what's on. For more TV recommendations and reviews, listen to The Radio Times Podcast.
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