Blunders by Scottish Water cost taxpayer £300,000 in fines

Scottish Water has been criticised by a sheriff for costing the taxpayer almost £300,000 in fines for criminal convictions in less than a decade.

The company, which killed nearly 600 fish during its latest error, has been convicted of more than 60 crimes since July 2002 and has been fined a total of £294,367.

Sheriff Lindsay Foulis noted that the firm had criminal convictions all over Scotland and has been averaging one every two months for the past nine years.

He said: “I have to take account of the fact the accused company regularly falls foul of water environment and services legislation. The convictions run from 2002.

“In 2010 alone there are five convictions, at Stranraer, Oban, Dunfermline, Kilmarnock and here in Perth. There are a significant number of previous convictions libelled against the accused.

“I quite appreciate the reason for that may well be linked to the fact that Scottish Water has such a significant role to play with regard to water treatment and management in Scotland.”

The company’s solicitor Jan Connerton told Perth Sheriff Court any fine imposed on the company would be passed on to the taxpayer.

She said: “A penalty on Scottish Water is effectively a penalty on its customers.”

She said £2.4 million of taxpayers’ money had been spent at the Methven Sewage Treatment works at the centre of the latest pollution conviction.

Despite the project, Scottish Water had failed to install a 24-hour overflow warning alarm despite it being one of the named conditions of its licence to treat waste at the site in Perthshire.

Fiscal depute Carol Whyte told the court that sewage backed up in the system and ended up being poured from the overflow pipe into the burn where it had a devastating impact.

She said the untreated sewage, which poured for 48 hours before being tackled by Scottish Water, was responsible for the deaths of 560 fish in the water.

The company yesterday admitted two charges; failing to comply with licence conditions by not installing the required warning alarm, and discharging sewage into the burn.

Dr Connerton said the company had five million customers and dealt with one billion litres of sewage every day and therefore was involved in “a relatively small” number of such incidents.

On the date it did not have the alarm system in place. Scottish Water accepts it wasn’t pumping the sewage sufficiently quickly.

“Scottish Water accepts it discharged sewage in breach of its licence conditions. One of the pumps had been running at half speed. Scottish Water was given three months to address the issue and did so well in advance of that. Scottish Water believes it was successful in dealing with the problem and did so swiftly and effectively. The company is aware of its duties.”

Sheriff Foulis fined the company £6,000.

The ruling came just days after the Scottish Government slashed £120m from Scottish Water’s budget for repairing the country’s pipe network.

A Scottish Water spokesman said: “Since this incident Scottish Water has installed the necessary electronic alarm system which would have alerted us to such an issue. Such incidents are extremely rare and therefore we believed that every precaution against those most commonly encountered problems had been taken.”