Live Sewage Overflow Map

Track sewage overflows in real-time across England and Wales
Updated every 15 minutes

Map Information

What am I seeing?

Here are the CSOs in England that we know are overflowing right now. We are using the Water Companies' own data, updated every 15 minutes.

Map Legend

  •   Each dot represents an overflowing CSO
  • Blue squares represent rainfall - darker blue means more rain - we get rainfall data two days delayed, so you can't see rainfall for live data, but if you scroll back in time, you can see how much it was raining.

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Overflow Summary by Company

Company Total CSOs Not Overflowing Overflowing
Anglian 1,433 1,416 17
Northumbrian 1,527 1,506 21
SevernTrent 2,450 2,438 12
Southern 1,023 1,008 15
SouthWestWater 1,335 1,315 20
ThamesWater 581 576 5
UnitedUtilities 2,241 2,230 11
WessexWater 1,429 1,424 5
Totals 12,019 11,913 106
Yorkshire Water, Dwr Cymru and Scottish Water are not yet included but will be coming soon.

How We Interpret the Data

Our Sophisticated Analysis Model

You might notice that some of the figures in the above chart, particularly around how long a CSO has been overflowing, are different from the figures on other websites. We use a more sophisticated model to figure out when CSOs really started overflowing.

The water companies send a signal each time a CSO overflows, saying that it has 'Started' and telling us when. Sometimes though, it sends multiple 'Started' events in a row. One event will say 'Started at 1pm', the next 'Started at 3pm', the next 'Started at 10pm'...

Its clear though that despite the latest alert being 'Started at 10pm', the overflow did actually start at 1pm - so the CSO has been overflowing for far longer. This is how we keep track of the state of each CSO overflow, and why our numbers are different, we don't just rely on the latest information.

There may be errors in our interpretation... and if we find any we're committed to updating this information so that it is as accurate as possible. If you find an error, please let us know.

Why This Matters

Accurate tracking of overflow durations helps us hold water companies accountable and provides a true picture of pollution in our waterways.

Raw Data from Water Companies

An image showing some database records as supplied by Uk Water
How we receive the data.

Our Interpretation

An image showing our interpretation of those records, there are far fewer
After we've interpreted it.