THE Environment Agency (EA) has told South West Water to fix scores of faults discovered at sites across Devon over the past year.

Some of the issues found included screens to prevent solid waste from entering water were either missing, broken or blocked, chopped sewage at risk of flowing into water during storms, leaking pipes, cracked tanks, missing emergency pumps and generators and faulty monitoring equipment.

Environment Agency inspectors have been checking sites across the South West intensively over the past two years.

The goal of the checks is to prevent pollution by making sure water companies are operating as they should and within their permits.

If inspections find they aren’t, then the water company is set strict actions to bring them back into compliance.

The team responsible for inspecting South West Water assets, like sewage treatment works and storm tanks, increased its number of inspections by 125 per cent from last year.

South West Water has been told to take over 250 actions to comply with Environment Agency permits and any further action being considering.

Of the South West Water sites investigated, 76 per cent were found to be compliant with their permits.

Clarissa Newell, Environment Agency water industry manager for Devon and Cornwall, said: ‘These inspections are not new.

‘They are essential health checks of the vital infrastructure that supplies clean drinking water and proper sewer systems.

‘Officers have become frequent visitors to water company sites that perform essential jobs, their findings resulting in increased spending on improvements, modernised permits and even site pride.

‘That said, when serious fault is found then enforcement will always remain an option to putting that right’,

Helen Wakeham, Environment Agency’s Director for Water said: ‘In our role as regulators of the water industry, we are changing how we operate - with better data, our largest ever enforcement workforce and greater powers to do our job effectively.

‘Inspections are a vital preventative measure, with our teams nationally issuing over 3,000 actions to water companies, including repairing sewage works and upgrading their infrastructure.

‘Together, this will drive meaningful improvements in performance, hold persistent offenders to account and ultimately create a cleaner water environment’.