Revealed: The London flats pushing raw sewage into the Thames
London Centric shows you the apartment blocks sending untreated human waste into the capital's waterways, causing "a quiet, steady, background poisoning".
London Centric will go to almost any lengths to bring you a story — including wading through human excrement. On Tuesday I donned a pair of waterproof trousers and headed out into a heavily-polluted London stream, in a bid to verify a story that sounded too shocking to be true.
This is the tale of “misconnections”, where badly-constructed homes illegally bypass treatment works and send their raw sewage into the waterways that feed the River Thames.
London Centric has spent weeks visiting sewers, unpacking the ownership of apartments and unravelling messy legal structures to bring you this story. The route to those responsible runs from mucky streams through off-shore trusts, a business run by an aristocratic relation of David Cameron, and FTSE 250 companies. In many of the cases we encountered the same thing: a desire to shift the high cost of fixing an underreported ecological disaster on to someone else.
As a result, for the first time London Centric is going to go beyond what other publications have done and name the specific blocks of flats which Thames Water believes have polluted the capital’s river system with human waste.
Scroll down to read the story.
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London Centric Investigates: The households pumping poo into the Thames.
By Jim Waterson and Rachel Rees
Admiral Court is an unremarkable block of flats at the end of a cul-de-sac in Hendon, north London, close to Brent Cross shopping centre. Yet, according to Thames Water, it is a key example of an alarming type of pollution that’s increasingly common across the capital. Thousands of domestic properties such as this one are suspected to be illegally plugged into the wrong part of the capital’s sewer system — and are now discharging untreated human waste into the River Thames.
Follow the route of the local sewers down the hill from Admiral Court and you’ll cross the M1 motorway, before diving under the Midland Main Line railway and ultimately arriving at the Silk Stream. Despite its appealing name, the stream is a heavily polluted waterway near Colindale tube station, filled with fly-tipped building waste and shopping trolleys.
On Tuesday afternoon, London Centric waded into the Silk Stream and located the pipes which are suspected to be carrying untreated waste from Admiral Court. Reaching a gloved hand down into water and picking up material from the stream bed revealed a curious black slimy substance. There were few signs of life other than a deeply unpleasant smell. Wet wipes, a sign of human waste, were everywhere. Even though it had not rained for days there was a steady stream of liquid coming from the drain outflows, which are only meant to carry rainwater.
“We think it might be the largest issue in terms of river pollution for London,” said Rob Gray of the Friends of the River Crane Environment (FORCE), a local charity.
He said the impact on London’s rivers from misconnections is potentially worse than the mass sewage releases from Thames Water’s treatment works that have grabbed headlines for years: “It’s the difference between a sharp pain and a chronic illness. The sewage works kick in from time to time if we have heavy rainfall — but it flushes through very quickly. This is a quiet, steady, background poisoning.”
“As shocked as you are”.
There are two separate sewer networks running under most of London’s streets. The first is for ‘foul’ water: the dirty polluted sewage that comes out of toilets, showers, washing machines, and other domestic appliances. This is designed to be taken away to a sewage treatment works, where it is chemically cleansed and filtered, before being released back into the river system.
The second set of sewers are for surface water: the rain collected by gutters and roadside drains. This is usually deposited directly into local rivers that flow into the Thames on the basis that rainwater should not unduly harm the environment, kill animals, or pollute swimming areas.
Misconnections occur when builders or homeowners — whether through laziness or ignorance — short-circuit the system by plumbing toilets and domestic appliances into the pipe meant for rainwater. This allows untreated material to flow into London’s streams, into rivers, then out into the Thames.
London Centric can name seven domestic housing blocks in the capital, collectively containing hundreds of flats, which are believed to have been misconnected in this way.
The addresses are based on tracing work carried out by Thames Water and were released following freedom of information-style requests by FORCE and Clean Up the River Brent (CURB), who handed the information to London Centric for verification. The properties range from conversions of old offices to recently-completed executive homes. Some of the blocks contain properties valued at more than a million pounds.
Finding out that your sewage is polluting local rivers can be traumatic. At Astha Court in Greenford, Ealing, a resident shouted at London Centric’s reporter for raising the issue and claimed they were only just learning about it themselves, saying they were “as shocked as you are” by the situation.
In some cases the original property developer that made the plumbing mistake is long gone, the freehold of the block of flats flipped to uncontactable overseas owners, or the day-to-day operation of the block has been left to a rapidly-changing series of private management companies.
The seven blocks of flats, all in west and north London, are spread across the boroughs of Ealing, Harrow, and Barnet. Six of them are suspected to have polluted arms of the River Brent and one the River Crane; both rivers ultimately feed into the Thames in west London. This means whatever is deposited in them makes its way down through the centre of the capital, winding through the section of the River Thames where swimming is tolerated by the Port of London Authority. All of the misconnected blocks of flats pose a major challenge to Sadiq Khan’s pledge to use his term as mayor of London to clean-up the capital’s rivers.
“All of the negativity around Thames Water has enabled this.”
Thames Water, the financially-stricken private business that runs the capital’s water and sewage networks, is regularly accused of polluting London’s rivers and failing to invest in the capital’s sewer network. Its ageing sewage works sometimes overflow during storms and result in the company dumping large amounts of untreated waste in the Thames. But when it comes to misconnections, the company is largely in the clear because the mistakes tend to be made by builders, take place on private land and are a breach of building regulations that should be enforced by councils.
Ben Morris of CURB, told London Centric that the vitriol aimed at Thames Water over its very real failings elsewhere has meant not enough public pressure is being put on local authorities and property developers to fulfil their legal duties: “All of the negativity around Thames Water has enabled this. Once you establish a villain then everyone else is cleaner than clean.”
With councils cutting their spending on building inspectors, plus builders who are either ignorant — or happy to feign ignorance — about planning laws, there has been less enforcement in this area.
Morris is a regular on ‘outfall safaris’ along the River Brent, where volunteers walk up and down looking for potential evidence of misconnections. He said it is easy to spot when a domestic sewer is wrongly connected to an rainwater outfall because the flows — sometimes known as “liquor” — fit with when people go to the toilet: “If you go and look at one at eight in the morning, there’s going to be a lot coming out. You’ll see wet wipes and the steam rising because of the difference in temperature.”
Volunteers working with CURB and FORCE report their suspicions to Thames Water, then the water company and its contractors try to trace the misdirected sewage to its source. Some of this is achieved by putting metal cages at sewer junctions, which are left to see if they catch solids. If they do, the team repeats this at subsequent junctions until they reach an individual property and knock on the door. Other solutions include chemical tests for ammonia, a sign of human waste, and releasing dyes into the sewers.
“There are good and honest men and women tracking turds up pipes and identifying where they have come from,” said Morris.
The freeholder who is a member of David Cameron’s extended family.
Working out who is legally responsible for fixing a misconnection can be tricky. Admiral Court contains 11 flats, owned on a leasehold basis. Once Thames Water had identified the issue it contacted the freeholder, a mysterious business with unclear ownership called Abacus Land 4 Ltd, which is based in the tax haven of Guernsey. Abacus was named in parliament as being managed by investment group Long Harbour, which is in turn run by William Astor. He is the future Viscount Astor and his step-brother-in-law is former prime minister David Cameron.
A representative of HomeGround, an arm of Astor’s property group, confirmed they had been contacted by Thames Water regarding the misconnection but insisted that fixing the sewers at Asher Court is the responsibility of the block’s resident-run management company. The residents have, in turn, outsourced responsibility to a private managing agent, who did not respond to requests for comment. In all this time, to the best of Thames Water’s knowledge, no solution has been found and the waste water continues to flow into the nearby stream.
At Research House in Perivale the freehold is linked to Patrick and David Kennedy, a pair of Irish property developers registered in Jersey, who did not respond to requests for comment. In this case, Ealing council said it is “liaising with Thames Water and the building’s duty holders to bring it into compliance”.
Not everything leads back to off-shore owners. At Astha Court the discovery that their sewage is flowing into the nearby river has been an expensive shock for the residents who have the responsibility for fixing it themselves.
“We purchased our flats in good faith, believing that the developer who constructed them complied with all the required regulations, including relating to service connections,” a spokesperson for the residents told London Centric.
“The building was also signed off by Ealing council, as being compliant with building regulations. Unfortunately, it has become clear many years after the building was completed and the developer transferred the freehold to us, that this was not the case and we are now having to address the issue ourselves.”
Ealing council said it had served the residents of Astha Court with an enforcement notice requiring them to repair the misconnection issue and emphasised that it is a criminal offence not to do so within a set time frame.
Gray, from the FORCE charity, said the issue can be difficult to fix, with pipework often buried deep underground: “The presumption is that when these properties were built the whole thing was plumbed into the surface water drainage.”
“We can’t grow food here now.”
It’s clear that these examples are just a tiny part of the total number of misconnections across the capital. Many more are at individual houses and are therefore far more difficult to trace than at bigger blocks of flats. Thames Water alone said it has identified 3,500 misconnections since 2020 and warned local boroughs are often slow to take enforcement action.
In Barnet, the council told London Centric this is “a complex area with fragmented legislation” and it has held meetings with Thames Water to agree a process for how it can address these problems more swiftly in future.
It said it was continuing to investigate the misconnections at Admiral Court, as well as two other properties identified by London Centric: Clementine Court in Finchley and Quayle Crescent in Whetstone: “The properties listed are under investigation, in some cases we await further details from the freeholders to confirm works have been completed. Where this information is not forthcoming, we will look to progress matters formally and in line with our enforcement policy.”
A spokesperson for FTSE 250 builder Crest Nicholson, which built Quayle Crescent, accepted there has been an issue with the development, where homes sell for over a million pounds, but said it has now been fixed: “We are aware of a historic misconnection issue which has now been resolved. A recent independent survey, conducted with the agreement of Barnet Council, has confirmed that no further works are required”.
Harrow council also said it had referred the misconnection at Matrix Court near Rayners Lane tube station to the Environment Agency for enforcement and is monitoring progress at Signature House in Edgware, where the owners have “started actions to rectify the issue”.
After checking out another collection of wet wipes in the Silk Stream, London Centric headed back to the shore in waders that needed a deep clean. By chance we encountered local resident Mia Ming-Steel, who was trying to clear fly-tipped waste on the stream’s banks with the support of volunteers from Marlborough Highways.
Ming-Steel had hoped to turn an abandoned area by the side of the waterway into a community garden. But she had been told to drop the plan due to the pollution from the outflows: “This area is at high risk of contamination due to the sewage spills in the Silk Stream. We can’t grow food here now.”
Morris, the River Brent campaigner, suggested part of London’s misconnection crisis is the public’s failure to accept responsibility for where sewage goes after it leaves their house, so long as it’s off their private property: “Brits want it to go and be gone.”
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This is a superb sub stack-passing on to others....some real journalism on London governance etc at last and not nuts or nasty.
Horrifying!! Great work. I have passed it on.