These areas are home to Derbyshire’s most polluted rivers and waterways – including Chesterfield, Derbyshire Dales, Amber Valley and North East Derbyshire

Sewage discharges have polluted every corner of Derbyshire in the last year, according to official data.

The water industry has been under widespread pressure from the public and the government to clean up its performance after recording 13,145 sewage dumping incidents across the county in 2022 – totalling to 79,719 hours of pollution pouring into the Derbyshire’s waterways.

There were 400,000 discharges in England and Wales over the same period – amounting to 3.3 million hours or 137,500 days of sewage being leaked across both countries.

Water companies have committed to making changes. Earlier this year Water UK, the industry regulator, apologised on behalf of these firms for “not acting quickly enough” to tackle sewage spills – and announced a multi-billion pound investment plan to upgrade the country’s crumbling Victorian sewage system.

A Water UK spokesperson said: “We recognise that more should have been done to address the issue of spillages sooner. We have listened and have an unprecedented plan to start to put it right. Over the next seven years water and sewerage companies plan to spend £10 billion in the biggest transformation of our sewers since the Victorian era.”

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A Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs spokesperson said: “Our ambitious Plan for Water sets out the increased investment, tougher enforcement and tighter regulation needed to clean up our waterways. We have recently confirmed £1.1 billion in new, accelerated investment to tackle storm overflows.

“We have driven up the number of storm overflows monitored across the network, from just 7% in 2010 to 91% now monitored. Under the Environment Act, water companies must improve transparency by reporting on discharges from storm overflows in near real-time by March 2025.”

Each local authority in Derbyshire is ranked below, according to the highest amount of sewage discharges recorded in 2022.