The six-times winner of England’s best kept village has pulled out of the competition because the smell of raw sewage coming from the river has become unbearable.
Chalfont St Giles, Buckinghamshire, nestles on the edge of the Chiltern Hills but Thames Water has admitted to dumping raw sewage into the River Misbourne since January.
The village is mentioned in the Domesday Book of 1086 and was home to poet John Milton when he completed Paradise Lost.
It was also used a set for the 1971 film Dad’s Army, where it provided the backdrop of Walmington-on-Sea.
It is the birthplace of former Liberal Democrat leader Sir Nick Clegg, while Noel Gallagher previously lived in an eight-bedroom house in the village.
Ozzy Osbourne and his wife Sharon reside in the nearby village of Jordans, which is within the parish.
Villagers have been complaining for months about a foul smell and after learning about the discharges have closed a children’s playground, river walk and duck pond.
The parish council said it had made the decision to withdraw from the competition last week.
Robert Gill, from the parish council, said he was “absolutely appalled” by the sewage running through Chalfont St Giles and that the village had been “sacrificed”.
Mr Gill, 58, said: “We’re all gutted. We’re parishioners ourselves and it took a lot of time for us to debate this.
“It is important to villagers that we enter these competitions but we were left with no choice.
“Chalfont St Giles is a quintessential and beautiful village. It is a lovely place to live with our river running through.
“It has been ruined by the actions of Thames Water. They sacrificed us to deal with other problems.
“It is bad enough that this has happened and we don’t want it to happen again.”
Mr Gill, who has lived in the village for 20 years, said villages became aware of sewage smells in June last year and the parish council were initially told it could be the drains.
However, in January, they found that the Amersham Road Balancing Tank was overflowing and pumping diluted sewage into the River Misbourne.
Contamination ‘high’
The river flows through the village and Mr Gill said a specialist team sent out by Thames Water found that levels of contamination were high.
He added: “The parish council had a letter in February from the Environmental Agency informing them there had been an incident and the sewers had flooded.
“From our understanding, Thames Water diverted sewage from the sewers and into our river.
“The way it was worded, it sounded like a single incident but this has been going on for months – they’ve been using the river to keep the pressure down.”
Mr Gill said the letter said that Thames Water had taken action to reduce the amount of sewage entering the river.
Chalfont St Giles was the winner of best kept village award in 2023 and had hoped to scoop a further award in which previous winners can compete against each other.
The village has won the competition, which is organised by the Campaign for Rural England, on five other occasions since 2002.
Mr Gill said: “The cup means where if you win multiple years on the trot, you’re in the running for getting the best village for multiple years.
“This has removed any chance of getting that.
“Our village show has had to be cancelled. It is quite a major issue for us as we’ve lost much of our summer festivities to this.
“The way the best kept village is marked, they look at playgrounds, open areas, places where people tend to congregate and enjoy the village.
“We’ve told people you shouldn’t be near those areas at the moment, especially the children’s play area. It would be a waste of time for people coming to see us.”
Mr Gill said the parish council is investigating how the diluted sewage was left pumping into their river for so long and what it can do to stop it from happening again.
He added: “We’ve never had sewage before. Sometimes it floods as we’re on a flood plain, but now we’ve got sewage seeping into the fields from the flooding.
“It has been an awful period of time for us and we’re seeking to find out why it happened and what changes will be made going forward.”
Thames Water was contacted for comment.
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