Danny Dyer joins call for water firms to be re-nationalised at Sheppey rally
Britain’s water bosses should be running for cover now that former EastEnders “bad boy” Danny Dyer has them in his sights.
Speaking at an anti-pollution rally in Leysdown, where he is filming the second series of his Sky TV show The Dyers’ Caravan Park with his daughter Dani, he let rip in a four-letter rant.
“My holidays used to be in a caravan in Canvey Island. It was a bit of a sh*thole but I could always get in the sea,” he told the crowd.
“But I didn’t realise how bad the pollution was these days until I stumbled on it filming this show. Now I’m just f***ing fuming about it. What is apparent to me is that the elite are taking the p*ss out of all of us.
“We have got to stick together to make the change. Our water bills are going up so we are paying them more to pump the sh*t into the sea. Some of the stories I heard today have broke my heart.
“Fame is a toxic thing but you have to use your platform in the right way. So I want to add my voice to it, as does my Dani, to make a little bit of noise.
“Will anything be done? Probably not. But we have to stand up and be counted. The UK is a beautiful place. We are an island with a beautiful coast all around us. We should be able to use it, especially as we are paying for it.
“Let’s see if we can organise a flotilla or something to go up the Thames to make a lot more noise. Let’s not give up the fight. You are proper people in Leysdown. I’ve fallen in love with the Isle of Sheppey. You are all grafters. We need to take (this fight) to the next level.”
He carried on his rant during follow-up interviews with the media and ended up saying an even ruder word to BBC South East reporter Michael Keohan when asked what he thought about new prime minister Andy Burnham.
Dyer snapped back: “I don’t know who the new prime minister is, mate. Do you? I didn’t vote for him."
The rally, in a field overlooking the sea next to the Garden Café and within a stone’s throw of Priory Hill and Nuts Farm holiday parks where the Dyers are based, was organised by the SOS Whitstable protest group.
Speakers included singer Becky Hill; former water worker and GMB union activist Cliff Roney; Ash Smith who founded the River Windrush Against Sewage Pollution group; and mother Julie Maughan who lost her daughter to E.coli after a swim in the sea during a family holiday in Devon.
Swimmer Ed Acteson, who co-founded SOS Whitstable five years ago after a number of sewage discharges into the sea, said: “We wanted to know why sewage was being discharged into the sea, if it was safe for our families to swim, and what the water companies were doing with the money we paid them.
“Five years later we have learned a great deal. But very little of it has made us feel better.
“We are here to say stop polluting our rivers and seas, put public health and the environment above shareholder profit and we are demanding the end of the failed privatisation of our water industry.”
He added: “This is not the result of an occasional accident. It’s a national scandal. In 2025, water companies discharged sewage into England’s waterways 291,492 times, that’s nearly 800 sewage spills every day. Those discharges lasted for 1.9 million hours – the equivalent of one pipe pumping sewage continuously for 210 years.”
He claimed that when England’s water industry was privatised it was debt free. By 2025, the total debt stood at £82.7 billion. At the same time, water companies had paid their shareholders more than £80 billion, he said and described it as an “extraction machine”.
He went on: “Water is not a luxury product. We cannot choose to stop using it and we cannot switch to a competitor. It’s a natural monopoly essential to our health and survival.
“Bringing water into public ownership will not repair every pipe overnight but it is the essential first step.”
Union campaigner Cliff Roney said: “I did 40 years in the water industry, including before it was privatised, so I know it can work. It will take millions of pounds but we can’t continue to pour sh*t into that sea! I want my grandchildren to go down onto a beach and build a sandcastle – not a poo castle. We now have CEOs earning in excess of a million pounds a year. If we fail at work we get the sack. But with this lot we give them even more money. It can’t carry on any longer.”
He worked on the Channel 4 TV show Dirty Business.
He said: “If you haven’t watched it already, please watch it. It will make you cry. We have now got to the point where if you turn up at a beach you have to check an app to see if it is safe to enter the sea.”
Speaking to Sheppey Scene afterwards he said he would return to Leysdown to test the waters. The beach currently has a two-star rating which means it is “good”.
Award-winning singer Becky Hill, herself an open-water swimmer, said the campaigners were “inspiring” and added: “I can’t stress how important it is to go and watch Dirty Business. I watched it in March and I was completely radicalised.”
But perhaps the most haunting speaker was Julie Maughan whose eight-year-old daughter Heather died in 1999 after contracting E.coli during a family holiday at Dawlish Warren.
She said: “This is a public health crisis which everyone needs to get involved in. We are not safe in the water. The water companies and the environment agency are not going to project you. You have to protect yourselves.
“The most alarming thing to me is what happened to Heather. We went away to a holiday park as a family of four and came home as a family of three. Heather died a horrible death. It liquified her from the inside out and destroyed her brain stem.
“I can’t get across how important this is to every single one of us. Go and tell people to watch Dirty Business. It is the most important programme you can watch and then help raise awareness.”
Close to tears, she added: “The saddest thing is, we lost Heather in 1999. And it’s worse now than it was then.”
Former police Detective Superintendent Ash Smith also asked the crowd to watch Dirty Business. “It will make you righteously angry,” he said.
On Monday he launched a parliamentary petition calling for a referendum on returning the water industry to public ownership. It remains open until October 1.
SOS Whitstable has its own petition calling for the water industry to be nationalised and already has 316,000 signatures.
Southern Water maintains its 10-year, £1.5 billion Clean Rivers and Seas Plan is "already starting to make a difference" with investment at Queenborough and Swalecliffe to “dramatically reduce storm overflows in the area."
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