Over 18,000 hours were spent dumping sewage into Chichester beaches in 2021
Chichester was the West Sussex area worst affected by sewage release in 2021, it has been found.
The area was subject to 18,674.94 hours worth of waste discharge, making up almost 3.5 million hours across the UK last year alone. Nearby Bognor Regis and Littlehampton had an equivalent of 1,146.98 hours worth of waste pumped into its waters.
The figures come from website "Top of the Poops", which collates Environment Agency data on waste water release in the UK. Chichester's pollution ranks 39th out of 597 constituencies across the UK.
The site has also warned that sewage has affected shellfisheries across the UK, including Chichester Harbour, which experienced over 230 sewage incidents. It warns that "shellfish can become unfit for human consumption when polluted by sewage".
Discussing the accuracy of the data, Top of the Poops also expresses concern about "absent" or "defective monitoring" from water companies, meaning the figures could be worse than they seem.
They added, "Monitoring is incomplete for many events. Quite a few of the sewage dump sites report their monitoring as 'zero percent'. This means that even for this incomplete data - we know the real picture is way worse."
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