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Anglian Water has been ordered to remove adverts that highlight the positive environmental work the company is undertaking.
Following complaints to the Advertising Standards Authority (ASA) the company was subject to investigation for an advert that set out work it is doing to boost resilience of supplies in its region.
Complaints from nine individuals said the advert, which was shown on television in September and October 2022, omitted “significant information” regarding pollution incidents.
The ASA upheld the complaint on the basis that environmental claims must be clear, and that unqualified claims could mislead if they omitted significant information.
Anglian must not run the adverts again in the form complained of, the ASA said. It told the company to “ensure that when making environmental claims they were adequately qualified and did not omit material information about the negative impact they had on the environment”.
It said the overall impression Anglian portrayed in the advert was of a company that “was making, and intended to make, a positive overall environmental contribution as a company”.
The advert referred to work including a water transfer scheme, using nature-based solutions and addressing storm overflows. The ASA said the use of “green spaces, trees and wildlife” as well as the voiceover in the advert contributed to the impression the company was working to improve the environment.
The ASA said it accepted Anglian was carrying out activities with a positive impact on the environment but ruled that adverts omitted activities that harmed the environment.
Its ruling said the overall impression of the company as having a positive impact was contradicted by pollution incidents.
“We considered that was material information which should have been made clear in the ads,” it said. “We concluded that the ads omitted material information and were therefore misleading.”
An Anglian spokesperson said: “We care deeply about helping look after our region and apologise that we unintentionally misled customers with this advertisement. We fully accept the ruling and took prompt action to remove the advert in line with the Advertising Standard Authority’s guidance.
“We take our responsibility to protect and enhance the environment incredibly seriously and are investing almost £800m this year to address issues related to spills, preserve water resources and protect against severe weather and flooding.”
On the same day that the complaints about Anglian were upheld, a similar case investigating a Severn Trent Water advert was dismissed by the ASA.
Two complainants challenged a TV ad shown in September 2022 promoting Severn Trent’s tree-planting programme. As in the Anglian case, the criticism was that the ad was misleading because it omitted reference to releasing sewage into the environment.
However, in this case the ASA decided not to uphold the complaint, saying Severn Trent’s overall environmental performance did not contradict the impression of the ad. It said it did not consider Severn Trent’s “history of releasing sewage into the environment was material information that needed to be included in the ad to prevent viewers from being misled”.
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