Data Transparency
Let’s dive into what data regarding water in England is open for public viewing and what is not…
Who's Transparent about Spills?
To promote the awareness of transparency between water companies and the public, we are putting forward a ranking table, whereby each regional water company in England is ranked based on their effort and performance in being open about their sewage outfall tracking and their ability to contribute to tackling water pollution, and specifically their openness regards to data releases.
Simplistically, the higher the ranking, the more data the water company has available to the public.
However, many elements are considered:
- How much data is available?
- How much data is useable?
- What format is the data available in?
- Is the data visually represented on their website?
- Is the data discussed and analysed?
Users can access detailed tables and raw data from 2022, as well as a map that visualizes the data – again using data from 2022.
There is a beach data dashboard showing annual averages – there is a beach status dashboard but there is no indication of when this is updated.
There is a full map of the Thames Water jurisdiction, this shows all sewage overflow occurrences live, and for how long this has occurred.
The data is very generalised and the sewage outflow data sites are only coastal sites.
Wessex Water sewage overflow map shows data of recent sewage spills (if it has occurred within the previous 24hrs) – this data is somewhat generalised, e.g. does not say for how long it has been spilling.
There is no sewage overflow data available. There is a report stating that Yorkshire Water is working towards this.
