A Wessex Water TV advert about its plans to tackle storm overflows has been banned as misleading because it omitted key information about its record on sewage pollution.
The Advertising Standards Agency investigated after receiving a complaint about the ad for the supplier, which provides water to 1.4 million customers and sewerage services to 2.9 million people in the south-west of England.
The ad said Wessex was investing £3m a month to tackle storm overflows and featured a voiceover that claimed it was “building more storm tanks to increase storage” and “separating rainwater from sewage”, adding that “a better way, for our waterways, is already under way”.
The ASA said it had upheld a complaint that the advert, which aired in February, was misleading because it omitted significant information about Wessex Water’s environmental impact. It said the advert should not appear again in the same form, concluding “that the ad omitted material information and therefore was likely to mislead”.
Wessex Water has been criticised for its record on sewage discharges by the Liberal Democrat leader, Ed Davey, who has called for tighter regulation on water companies. In May 2023, Wessex was fined £280,000 by a Swindon court for supplying water unfit for human consumption for a three-week period in 2021.
Storm overflows are supposed to be used by water companies only in extreme weather but for many years they have been used routinely, discharging raw sewage even on dry days in some cases.
Wessex Water argued to the ASA that its advert contained no broad claims about environmental performance but was about the issue of storm overflows. It claimed that the ad took a balanced and transparent approach by addressing the shortcomings of outdated systems, particularly storm overflows and sewers, while providing an honest account of their forward progress plan.
However, the ASA concluded that although Wessex’s plan would probably result in environmental improvements, its storm overflow problems had caused harm to the environment and “we considered that was significant information which should have been made clear in the ads”.
It said: “In this case, we considered that this ad gave people the impression that Wessex Water was taking steps to reduce environmental damage caused by pollution incidents associated with storm overflow.”
Wessex Water said: “We are disappointed with the ASA’s ruling based on one single complaint it received about our advert seen by hundreds of thousands of people … We acknowledge that past environmental performance has fallen below our expectations and we have taken steps to address this.”
The ASA last year upheld complaints about other water companies and ruled against two ads by Anglian Water Services after they omitted information about the company’s history of releasing sewage into the environment. It also upheld complaints against Severn Trent Water on the same issue.
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Separately on Wednesday, the ASA also ruled against Luton Rising, the owners of London Luton airport, over a magazine advert and poster on the London Underground that said: “If we miss our environmental limits, our expansion will be stopped in its tracks.”
The campaign groups Adfree Cities and the Group for Action on Leeds Bradford Airport were among those who complained that the adverts were misleading because they omitted significant information about emissions from flights.
Luton Rising had argued that the purpose of the adverts was to show people that mitigating environmental impacts were central to the airport’s expansion plans.
Luton Rising said: “The ASA accepted that the specific carbon emissions covered by GCG [Green Controlled Growth proposals] were set out on the Luton Rising website, to which viewers of the advertisement were pointed. They felt that this distinction should have been made clearer in the advertisement itself, which we will do in any future advertisements.”
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