Sheffield Council takes aim at utility companies with plan to charge £2,500 for digging up roads at peak times

Water and power companies in Sheffield were scolded at a council meeting for digging up roads in peak times and sending sewage into the city’s rivers.

Angry councillors called out a number of utility companies at a Full Council meeting at Sheffield Town Hall.

Namely, a motion submitted by Sheffield Labour took aim at “repeated and often uncoordinated road works across Sheffield by utility companies [causing] disruption and frustration for residents”.

The motion called for utility companies to be charged up to £2,500 a day when they dig up the busiest roads at peak times.

At the meeting, Councillor Ben Miskell, who submitted the motion, said people in Sheffield are “rightly angry” after Yorkshire Water was fined £150,000 in April 2024 for dumping sewage into the the region’s rivers, and another £865,000 for killing hundreds of fish with chlorinated water in July 2025.

He added the provider’s chief executive had earned nearly £2million at a time when “bills are rising, leaks are wasting water and hosepipe bans are being enforced”.

“Residents see the contrast all too clearly,” he said. “Sewage in our rivers, water gushing from burst pipes and bosses being rewarded while the public pay the price.”

He also named Cadent and Northern Powergrid as companies that had closed off streets across the city for work recently.

Stannington ward councillor William Sapwell [Lib Dem] told the chamber how Stannington was hit by Yorkshire Water’s failures in 2022 when a gas flood left thousands of homes without heating in the dead of winter.

He said: “We now have a hosepipe ban in place despite several ongoing leaks that I am aware of in my ward, one of which I am told, is wasting water at a rate of two litres per second.

“Residents in my area are beyond frustrated.”

Councillor Peter Gilbert from the Green Party told the chamber that “no single stretch of river in England is in good overall health”.

He said while Sheffield’s namesake river the Sheaf is in moderate ecological condition, the Don is rated poor.

Coun Gilbert added: “The motion before us points out residents’ frustration with large payments to bosses overseeing failing public services.

“There is a solution to that… Take it out of private hands.

“If the Labour Party were actually bothered about this they would listen to the 84 per cent of the public that want to see water in public ownership.”