The Times

Clean It Up

2024

The Times’s award-winning ‘Clean Air for All’ campaign, launched in 2019, pushed the issue of air pollution up the national agenda, helping secure policy changes such as the government’s 2030 ban on new petrol and diesel car sales. The newspaper decided to do the same for the poor state of Britain’s rivers and seas. The result was the ‘Clean It Up’ campaign.

With the launch, The Times published a manifesto laying out the campaign’s demands for water companies, farmers, regulators and the government: four goals that were both realistic and would make a major change. River pollution stories made the front page of The Times three times in the campaign’s first week, prompting Rishi Sunak to promise he would hit sewage polluters “hard”.

The campaign has been endorsed by water campaigners including Feargal Sharkey, welcomed by two water company chief executives and the trade body Water UK, and praised by the Labour Party and the Liberal Democrats. Influential Oxford University economist and government adviser Dieter Helm called the campaign “exceptionally good”.

The last government said of the campaign: “We welcome the awareness it will raise of this critically important issue.”

The campaign has notched a series of successes, from unlimited fines for polluters to the water sector being pushed to invest a record £88 billion by 2030. Clean It Up also helped trigger a watershed apology from the water sector and the publication of the government’s sweeping “plan for water”. Several water company bosses waived their bonuses last year as a result of the pressure, and the last government later committed to banning bonuses of egregiously polluting companies — an exclusive story broken by The Times on its front page.

Campaigners from local groups such as Windrush Against Sewage Pollution, SOS Whitstable and Save Windermere to national groups such as River Action and Surfers Against Sewage have said the campaign has had a huge impact in terms of public awareness and industry action.

The campaign’s coverage has ranged from FOI-led investigations of company lobbying and contacts-based scoops. In July 2024, the UK’s information commissioner ordered water companies to be more open with their data after a 9-month long fight by Clean It Up to make six water firms release data that could reveal evidence of illegal sewage spills. Clean It Up has also focused on constructive stories where action was being taken to improve water quality, from “rewriggling” rivers to communities creating designated bathing waters.

The team at the Times have not shied away from the cost to consumers of addressing pollution, making clear in leader editorials that water bills will likely have to rise. Readers have written to tell the Times their personal stories of river pollution around the country, which were curated and published. Journalists from across the paper, including environment editor Adam Vaughan, have contributed to the campaign.