Councillors have slammed South West Water for “failing Plymouth” with one even claiming Britain’s Ocean City has been reduced to a “sick joke”.

Last year, Plymouth Hoe East, which includes Tinside Beach, was the most polluted bathing area in England and Wales, by duration of sewage overflows.

And residents across the city have had to put up with the daily misery of rotten egg smells from sewage treatment works for decades.

There was unanimous cross-party support at a Plymouth City Council meeting on Monday to hold South West Water to account over its odour control, sewage discharges, water infrastructure resilience, rising customer bills and future investment plans for the city.

The authority is calling on the government for reforms that prioritise the interests of customers and communities, demanding that public health and environmental protection must be placed ahead of shareholder profit.

It comes after South West Water admitted issues with its odour control at its Plymouth Central Waste Water Treatment Works at Cattedown following a Freedom of Information Act request and pleaded guilty to a string of pollution offences across Devon and Cornwall at Plymouth Magistrates’ Court this month.

It was also recently revealed that the former boss of the water company, Susan Davy, was handed a £270,000 bonus despite a parasite outbreak that contaminated drinking water and left more than 140 people ill in Brixham in 2024, for which South West Water was fined £1.9 million.

Cllr Lauren McLay said water bills in Plymouth had gone up by 32 per cent but questioned where the money was going.

“Certainly not enough is going to fix the pipes, upgrade the treatment facilities or in clearing up our coasts.”

She said that 14 per cent of people’s water bills each month were paying off South West Water’s billions of debt while they handed dividends to their shareholders, which she claimed amounted to £4.5 billion since the water companies were privatised.

Councillors urged people who could not sit in their gardens or open their windows because of smells coming from wastewater treatment plants at Cattedown, Marsh Mills, Camels Head and Ernesettle to send their complaints to South Water via its new online reporting form.

Evidence from affected residents on the impacts on public health from the smells will be collected by the council and referred to a scrutiny panel.

The council is seeking a timescale on when the odour control systems will be fixed at Cattedown and will investigate whether plans and conditions attached to planning consents issued to SWW have been complied with.

Cllr Keith Moore said people had lived with the Ernesettle Pong for decades and it had got worse “year on year”. 

“The plant here can treat sludge, so South West Water chucks it in from across Plymouth and South East Cornwall. It processes the region’s waste, and the stench is our reward.

“Twenty-five years ago, the council took legal action over these smells. A quarter of a century on, the same stink, the same company, we are still asking.

Cllr Byran Driver said people in his ward were “trapped in their own homes” breathing “nauseating air”.

“We proudly call Plymouth Britain’s Ocean City but for the residents I represent in Sutton and Mount and, I predict the rest of the city, that title has been reduced to a sick joke,”