Law firm secures funding to launch opt-out damages claims against water companies over untreated sewage

Leigh Day has secured a "significant" funding package from legal finance experts Bench Walk to bring opt-out standalone competition damages claims in the Competition Appeal Tribunal against water and sewerage companies in England.

The law firm announced that Professor Carolyn Roberts, a water resource management specialist, will represent a class of UK-bill-paying households to bring the claims, alleging that water companies have overseen unlawful discharges of untreated sewage and wastewater into waterways.

As an 'opt-out' claim, claimants do not need to sign up in order to bring the claim - instead, everyone who has suffered loss is included unless they specifically choose to opt out.

According to Zoë Mernick-Levene, a partner at Leigh Day, the firm has been investigating the cases against water companies over the last year.  

Mernick-Levene said: "[We] are delighted to be working with Bench Walk to bring what we expect will be the first 'environmental' collective action in the Tribunal."

Alongside water companies, Government bodies have also been subject to legal challenges in relation to untreated sewage.

Last month, the Good Law Project launched its own legal challenge against the Government over plans the public interest litigation group argued will allow the discharge of untreated sewage into water bodies to continue for decades, breaching "ancient" common law rights under the Public Trust Doctrine (PTD).

October also saw the High Court refuse permission for a judicial review claim brought against the water services regulator for England and Wales, Ofwat, which contended the regulator had failed to regulate sewage discharge into rivers, lakes and the sea.

Adam Carey