Teacher forced to quit job after chronic condition linked to sewage pollution – as sickness reports nearly triple
A secondary school teacher was forced to stop working after developing an incurable ear condition he believes was caused by surfing in sewage-polluted water.
Reuben Santer told Sky News he has had “an awful nine months” after contracting Meniere’s disease, which has caused him to have severe dizzy spells and hearing loss.
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His case has been highlighted by Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) who say reports to them of being sick after entering the water have nearly tripled in the last year.
Their concerns come as the chair of the water regulator Ofwat is to face a grilling from MPs om Monday on how water companies plan to invest in crumbling infrastructure that has led to sewage regularly being spilled in UK waterways.
SAS says that as well as being an environmental problem, the sewage scandal is increasingly a public health one too.
‘Traumatic experience’
Reuben’s problems started last November when the 33-year-old developed an infection in his middle ear after a surf at Saunton Beach in Devon.
“I had this really loud, intense ringing in one side the day after a surf,” he told Sky News.
“I thought I was having a haemorrhage; I had no idea what was going on. I went to the doctor and they said it was a middle ear infection likely caused by dirty water but it’s impossible to prove.”
Reuben Santer (L) has suffered from ear infections linked to sewage pollution
Reuben’s symptoms went away with antibiotics but he fell ill a month later after going back in the water for the first time. He only realised afterwards that a sewage pollution warning had been in place and a day later he was “throwing up, having intense rotational vertigo, I completely lost my balance”. It emerged he had labyrinthitis in his inner ear.
“You can normally recover from that but somehow it triggered Meniere’s disease which is the same symptoms but chronically. It doesn’t have a known cure.
“I’ve had a really awful nine months, the worst thing is I lost my job.
“Being a teacher is stressful, I could not handle being in a classroom and having unpredictable attacks of vertigo…when everything around you is spinning. It was pretty traumatic.
“I haven’t been going out on my own, I haven’t been driving when I was previously an independent person so that’s been pretty tough. I also have hearing loss in my left ear and roaring tinnitus and sound sensitivity.”
Reports of sickness up by nearly a third
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What caused Britain’s sewage crisis?
While the definite cause of Reuben’s condition is not provable, Surfers Against Sewage (SAS) is concerned about a rise in people getting sick from dirty water.
In its annual Water Quality Report released this week, the campaign group said between October 2022 and September 2023 1,924 people reported getting ill after entering the water – up from 720 the year previously.
Of those who visited a doctor, three out of four people said the doctor attributed their illness to exposure to sewage-polluted waters.
The illnesses caused an estimated five years worth of sick days and the majority of cases happened at bathing sites considered to be “excellent” quality, the SAS report said.
Surfer ‘horrified’ to contract parasite
Naomi Jenkin, 37, was ill for three weeks after she contracted the parasite cryptosporidium following a surf in Newquay in the spring.
“It’s something that you get from water that’s contaminated with sewage,” she said. “I was horrified.”
She said her symptoms included being “doubled up in pain and feeling nauseous”.
“I had to just stop work and basically take myself to bed. I had a really bad stomach upset, and it basically went on for three weeks in total, so it really affected my life quite a lot.
“It’s also knocked my confidence to go back into the water.”
Naomi Jenkin was ill for three weeks after contracting a parasite
In some cases, sicknesses caused by suspected sewage pollution have been so severe people had to be hospitalised.
Robbie Bowman fell ill a few hours after going for a swim with a scrape on his leg in Cardiff and was found by his son “lying on the floor, waving my arms about, not making any sense”.
In hospital he was diagnosed with the bacterial infection cellulitis and kept on intravenous antibiotics for a week as doctors feared he had sepsis.
He told Sky News that he spent most of August “with my leg up trying to encourage the healing of my skin and the blisters on the back of my calf” and his skin is still red. A possible cause was given as Golden Staph, which can be caused by swimming in dirty water.
“It has quite massively impacted me,” he said. “I don’t trust the water anymore. That for me is the biggest shame.”
General Election ‘tipping point for change’
Giles Bristow, the CEO of Surfers Against Sewage, said the rise in sickness reports could be due to more people being aware of the sewage scandal and linking their health issues to that.
But he said more people are using water for recreational activities at the same time as rampant sewage dumping so “it’s bound to be that more people are getting ill”.
While firms are allowed to discharge sewage overflow when there is too much rainfall, this is only meant to happen in exceptional circumstances – yet several investigations over the past few years have found it is regularly happening illegally.
The SAS’s report found that untreated sewage was discharged across waterways in England, Scotland, Northern Ireland and Wales more than 399,864 times – over 1,000 times a day.
Mr Bristow said the report “reveals the complacency and disregard of governments, water companies and regulators towards the health of rivers and coastlines in the UK – and by extension people’s health”.
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Huge sewage spill captured in cornwall
With a general election looming, he called on all parties to adopt the SAS’s End Sewage Pollution Manifesto – a five point plan that includes cracking down on the profits made by water companies and ensuing regulators have resources to enforce pollution laws.
“This is an absolutely key issue for the public and we’ve got a mandate for change like never before,” he said.
“You wouldn’t put up with a Victorian health system where you turn up to your doctors and they give you a leech. So why should we put up with turning up to use our rivers and sees and finding it’s a Victorian system that discharges pollution into our waterways?”
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A Defra spokesperson admitted the levels of sewage dumping in UK waterways is “unacceptable” but insisted action was being taken to address it.
They pointed to the Plan for Water which will see firms face unlimited fines for sewage dumping.
“This plan includes targets so strict they are leading to the largest infrastructure programme in water company history – £60bn over 25 years – which in turn will result in hundreds of thousands fewer sewage discharges,” the spokesperson said.
Industry body Water UK has said it is prepared to almost double that spending to pay for upgrades and cut sewage discharges.
However, there is anger at the suggestion to increase consumer bills to fund it – given the large bonuses and dividends made by water company bosses in recent years.
The issue looks set to become a key battleground when voters next go to the polls, especially in rural and coastal areas traditionally represented by Conservative MPs – but which the Lib Dems are looking to take.
Tim Farron, the Lib Dems’ environmental spokesperson, called the SAS report an “insult” to people “who want to swim in their local river or sea without getting sick”, and called on the Conservatives to “ban bonuses for water company bosses until this filthy practice is brought to an end”.
Labour’s shadow environment secretary Steve Reed said the water industry “is broken after 13 years of Tory government” and Labour “will give Ofwat the powers to ban the payment of bonuses to water bosses until they have cleared up their filth”.
The threat of physical attacks by Iran on people living in the UK has increased “significantly” since 2022, according to a new report by parliament’s intelligence watchdog.
Iran poses a “wide-ranging, persistent and unpredictable threat” to the UK, according to the Intelligence and Security Committee.
It also said Iran’s intelligence services were “willing and able – often through third party agents – to attempt assassination within the UK, and kidnap from the UK”.
Iran’s supreme leader Ayatollah Ali Khamenei. Pic: Office of the Iranian Supreme Leader/West Asia News Agency/Reuters
The report said there have been 15 murder or kidnap attempts against British citizens or UK-based individuals since the beginning of 2022 and August 2023.
Sky News has approached the Iranian embassy for a comment.
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Millions of Iranians unite in mourning
The report authors add: “Whilst Iran’s activity appears to be less strategic and on a smaller scale than Russia and China, Iran poses a wide-ranging threat to UK national security, which should not be underestimated: it is persistent and crucially – unpredictable.”
The committee also says that while the threat is often focused on dissidents and other opponents to the regime, there is also an increased threat to Jewish and Israeli interests in the UK.
The report warns that while Iran has not developed a nuclear weapon, it has taken steps towards that goal.
It found that Iran had been “broadly compliant” with the 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), aimed at limiting its nuclear ambitions.
But since Donald Trump withdrew from that deal in 2018, the report said the nuclear threat had increased and Tehran “had the capability to arm in a relatively short period”.
The UK government is also accused of “fire-fighting” rather than developing a real understanding of Iran.
Iran’s president oversees a parade in Tehran in April showing off the country’s military hardware. Pic: West Asia News Agency/Reuters
Missiles are paraded through the capital during the recent National Army Day ceremony. Pic: West Asia News Agency/Reuters
The report says: “The government’s policy on Iran has suffered from a focus on crisis management, driven by concerns over Iran’s nuclear programme, to the exclusion of other issues.
“As one of our expert witnesses told the committee: ‘Strategy is not a word that I think has crossed the lips of policy makers for a while, certainly not in relation to Iran’.”
The committee concluded its evidence-taking in August 2023, the result of two years of work, but the report authors say their conclusions “remain relevant”.
But the report authors questioned whether UK sanctions against individuals would “in practice deliver behavioural change. Or in fact unhelpfully push Iran towards China”.
The committee also said the British government should consider proscribing the Iranian Revolutionary Guards Corps (IRGC), although some argue it would limit the UK’s ability to talk to and influence Iran.
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Responding to the report, a UK government spokesperson said: “The government will take action wherever necessary to protect national security, which is a foundation of our plan for change.
“We have already placed Iran on the enhanced tier of the foreign influence registration scheme and introduced further sanctions against individuals and entities linked to Iran, bringing the total number of sanctions to 450.”
British security services say Tehran uses criminal proxies to carry out its work in Britain.
In December, two Romanians were charged after a journalist working for a Persian language media organisation in London was stabbed in the leg. In May, three Iranian men appeared in court charged with assisting Iran’s foreign intelligence service and plotting violence against journalists.
Earlier this year, the UK government said it would require the Iranian state to register everything it does to exert political influence in the UK, because of what it called increasingly aggressive activity.
The first thing you notice when immigration officers stop a possible illegal moped delivery driver is the speed in which the suspect quickly taps on their mobile.
“We’re in their WhatsApp groups – they’ll be telling thousands now that we’re here… so our cover is blown,” the lead immigration officer tells me.
“It’s like a constant game of cat and mouse.”
Twelve Immigration Enforcement officers, part of the Home Office, are joining colleagues from Avon and Somerset Police in a crackdown on road offences and migrants working illegally.
The West of England and Wales has seen the highest number of arrests over the last year for illegal workers outside of London.
“It is a problem… we’re tackling it,” Murad Mohammed, from Immigration Enforcement, says. He covers all the devolved nations.
“This is just one of the operations going on around the country, every day of the week, every month of the year.”
Murad Mohammed, from Immigration Enforcement, says his team are attempting to tackle the issue
Just outside the Cabot Circus shopping complex, we stop a young Albanian man who arrived in the UK on the back of a truck.
He’s on an expensive and fast-looking e-bike, with a new-looking Just Eat delivery bag.
He says he just uses it for “groceries” – but the officer isn’t buying it. He’s arrested, but then bailed instantly.
We don’t know the specifics of his case, but one officer tells me this suspected offence won’t count against his asylum claim.
Such is the scale of the problem – the backlog, loopholes and the complexity of cases – that trying to keep on top of it feels impossible.
This is one of many raids happening across the UK as part of what the government says is a “blitz” targeting illegal working hotspots.
Angela Eagle, the border security and asylum minister, joins the team for an hour at one of Bristol’s retail parks, scattered with fast food chains and, therefore, delivery bikes.
Border security and asylum minister, Angela Eagle, speaks to Sky News
She says arrests for illegal working are up over the last year by 51% from the year before, to more than 7,000.
“If we find you working, you can lose access to the hotel or the support you have [been] given under false pretences,” she said.
“We are cracking down on that abuse, and we intend to keep doing so.”
There are reports that asylum seekers can rent legitimate delivery-driver accounts within hours of arriving in the country – skipping employment legality checks.
Uber Eats, Deliveroo, and Just Eat all told Sky News they’re continuing to strengthen the technology they use to remove anyone working illegally.
But a new Border Security Bill, working its way through Parliament, could see companies fined £60,000 for each illegal worker discovered, director disqualifications and potential prison sentences of up to five years.
“I had them all in to see me last week and I told them in no uncertain terms that we take a very tough line on this kind of abuse and they’ve got to change their systems so they can drive it out and off their platforms,” the minister tells me.
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The gig economy – so prevalent in every city – creates another incentive for those wanting to risk their lives coming to the UK illegally.
More than 20,000 migrants have crossed the English Channel to the UK in 2025 – a record number at this point of the year.
For some of those who arrive, a bike and a phone provide a way to repay debts to gang masters.
There were eight arrests today in Bristol, one or two taken into custody, but it was 12 hours of hard work by a dozen immigration officers and the support of the police.
As two mopeds are pushed onto a low-loader, you can’t help but feel, despite the best intentions, that at the moment, this is a losing battle.
We see the boat from a distance – the orange of the life jackets reflected in the rising sun.
And as we draw closer, we can make out dozens of people crowded on board as it sets off from the shore, from a beach near Dunkirk.
There is no sign of any police activity on the shore, and there are no police vessels in the water.
Instead, the migrants crammed into an inflatable dinghy are being watched by us, on board a private boat, and the looming figure of the Minck, a French search and rescue ship that soon arrives.
Minck, a French search and rescue ship, shadows the boat
The dinghy meanders. It’s not heading towards Britain but rather hugging the coast.
A few of the passengers wave at us cheerfully, but then the boat starts to head back towards the shore.
Sky’s Adam Parsons at the scene
As it nears a different beach, we see a police vehicle – a dune buggy – heading down to meet it.
Normal practice is for French police officers to slice through the material of any of these small boats that end up back on shore.
Two police officers get out of the buggy and wait. A police helicopter arrives and circles above, performing a tight circle over the heads of the migrants.
The police think they might be about to go back on to the beach; in fact, these passengers know that most of them are staying put.
Listen to The World with Richard Engel and Yalda Hakim every Wednesday
The boat stops a short distance from the shore and four people jump out. As they wade towards the beach, the boat turns and starts to head back out to sea.
We see the two police officers approach these four men and have a brief conversation.
They don’t appear to check the bags they are carrying and, if they do question them about why they left the boat, it is the most cursory of conversations.
In reality, these people probably don’t speak French but they were almost certainly involved in arranging this crossing, which is against the law. But all four walk away, disappearing into the dunes at the back of the beach.
Read more:
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Why do migrants want to come to the UK?
We follow the boat as it chugs off in the direction of Britain, carrying around 50 people.
The Minck returns to shadowing its progress, but its job is limited to offering help if the boat gets into trouble.
Otherwise, if the engine keeps working, then this flimsy vessel will reach British waters in a few hours’ time.
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