The one-day event at Looe’s Millpool centre on Wednesday, January 29, was a registration-only event to give customers the chance to talk to South West Water’s teams in person about £500,000 planned investment in the town’s bathing water.

The town’s two Cornwall councillors are cautiously optimistic after representations to the water provider.

The reassurances come on the back of an announced £500,000 investment in Looe by March to improve the town’s bathing water; with £20-million in total allocated for improvements to prevent pollution.

The money will be invested between 2025 and 2030 to reduce the use of storm overflows at five locations around Looe including Bone Mill pumping station by Millpool, Buller Quay, Hannafore Pumping Station, Plaidy Pumping Station and West Looe Quay.

The company also has plans for £2.5-billion investment in the local area and wider region over the next five years.

Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) say the investment is welcome but it’s slow progress. Campaigner for SAS Lucy Luck has been following the South West Water roadshow around the South West for the past months and said: “These are their community roadshows but they’re not really being truthful to the community. We’re here to show our frustrations that they’re not making change that we want to see.

“Public health is at risk. The environment is at risk. We want the data. They’re not giving us the data. We have an app that gives people advice on when they should go into the water, and they’re not giving us all that data, so it goes back to the public health being at risk. We’re just angry, that’s why we’re here.

Asked about the £500,000 announced by South West Water on improvements to the bathing water in Looe, Lucy said: “It’s positive news and moving in the right direction, it’s just very, very slow progress.

“We have no choice but to pay our money to these water companies. We want to see that change and we want to see it happen soon.”

Cllr Jim Candy for Looe West, Pelynt, Lansallos and Lanteglos chatted to the protesters, a keen wild swimmer he thanked the Surfers Against Sewage for their app which he uses to check out pollution caused by sewage discharges before a sea swim.

He said: “The event itself was very informative, I was told that there is £20-million allocated for improvements to prevent pollution in Looe, with an engineer telling me of issues in West Looe, including the need to camera survey some pipes on West Looe Hill, where he suspects spring water is getting into the system.

“There are also plans for works at Hannafore and Polperro, and more works to Bone Mill pumping site in the Millpool. I emphasised the need to communicate with residents via town and parish councils, and councillors.

“For example Pelynt sewage works has recently been upgraded to improve capacity, but the first thing residents knew was when vans and lorries arrived, raising concerns locally. South West Water recognised that their communication needs improvement,” he added.

Cllr Armand Toms for East Looe and Deviock commented too and said: “During the event I talked to many of the officers and engineers attending and had some full and frank discussions on issues across the area I serve.

“These included upgrades in the plant at Widegates and assurances on the need to do works at Nomansland and Seaton.

“In East Looe, works included schemes in Sunrising, Bodrigan Road and Barbican Hill to separate the road drainage from the foul water system. The scheme at Sunrising is the most progressed and a costed scheme is moving forward, the same will happen in the other areas soon.

“More work will be done in the town to stop salt water integration and works on the CSO (combined sewer overflow). There will also be works on Bay View Road to help with the water run off, the works on the pumps in the area having now been completed.

“The promise of £21-million into the area is welcomed and I hope this helps solve some of our issues with spills of sewage into the rivers.”

The protestors from Surfers Against Sewage and Cornwall Federation of WI Climate Ambassadors had registered to be admitted into the exhibition which had a heavy security presence not allowing for any press coverage of the event without pre-registration.

According to a spokesperson from South West Water, disruption of previous events had led to them implementing a policy of no walk-ins at their community roadshow which, their website says, are “conversation-based” with information boards on display and experts from around the business “ready to talk”.

Jude Wood from the Cornwall Federation of WI Climate Ambassadors joined the protest outside the Millpool and said: “Two years ago, the National Federation of Women’s Institutes passed a resolution on clean rivers for people and wildlife because our members were so disgusted with the amount of pollution flowing out of sewage from CSOs (combined sewer overflows) into our rivers.

“We have a lot of members who are interested in bathing, in our rivers and bathing in the sea and we felt that we had to take a stand to campaign nationally to improve the quality of our rivers and our seas for wildlife and for people.”

“We’ll be asking them to put the environment before profit and actually to start spending our money on the environment and our rivers to protect it for the future, for our children and our grandchildren.

On the investment of £500,000 announced prior to the Looe roadshow, Jude said: “They are only doing that because of public pressure being put on them, and they are only doing that now because the government is putting pressure on them, because of the failure of the Environment Agency to actually do the job it’s supposed to and have some teeth.

“These companies are getting away with actually having dirty profits and we’re having dirty water.”