Why River Hub · Take action

Write to your MP

Give your MP the evidence for your own doorstep and the specific asks — then write a short letter, in your own words. It takes a few minutes and reaches the one person who can put these questions to the regulator.

Get the evidence for where you live

River Dart catchment — figures you can quote

5,171 hrsof recorded discharge from emergency overflows across the catchment, 2020–2025.

18emergency overflows on record — 10 of them discharged in 2024.

0of them appear in any live public feed. Every figure on this site came from an information request.

Sources: Environment Agency EDM annual returns and the water company's EIR disclosure (EIR26209).

Choose the points you want to make

Pick two or three — a focused letter lands harder than a long one.

Publish the method, not just the promiseAsk the Environment Agency and Ofwat to publish how they assess whether a treatment works can serve the population connected to it — and to publish the results as open data, for every works.Evidence to cite: volunteers had to invent this method themselves; see How we knowReport emergency overflows like storm overflowsAsk that emergency overflows be brought into the same near-real-time public reporting as storm overflows, instead of sitting in a separate category that only an information request can reach.Evidence to cite: EIR26209 — 18 overflows, 5,171 hours, no live feedName the assets, in order, with datesAsk for a published plan that names which assets will be fixed, in what order, at what cost, and by when — so bill payers can check progress against it.Evidence to cite: bills up 32% in April 2025; investment programme of £3.2bn to 2030Make the new regulator publish an asset-level planThe government is replacing Ofwat with a single water regulator. Ask that it be required, from day one, to publish an evidence-based plan at the level of individual assets — which works and overflows are failing, on what evidence, what the fix is, and when it happens — rather than sector-wide targets that nobody can check locally.Evidence to cite: the Cunliffe review's case for reform; no public asset-level plan exists todayTreat a chronic fault as a faultAsk why an emergency overflow discharging for hundreds of hours a year is treated as permitted operation rather than as a failed asset requiring enforcement.Evidence to cite: an emergency overflow that ran for 105 days in one yearGet the worst local assets into the next programmeAsk your MP to press for the assets in your own area to be included in the next round of environmental investment, and to ask what evidence is being used to choose.Evidence to cite: your local figures from step 1

Write it, in your own words

Open WriteToThem, and write a short letter to your MP in your own words — a few honest sentences, using the figures and points above. Keep this page open beside it.

Open WriteToThem →Add your postcode above to skip a step

Why we don't give you a letter to paste

WriteToThem detects and blocks identical messages, and asking you to send pre-written text breaks their conditions of use — your message would be filtered out before it reached anyone. MPs also tell them they discount form letters. So we give you the local evidence and the asks, and you write the letter. Six honest sentences from a constituent beat a thousand identical ones.

WriteToThem's guidelines for campaigners ↗