Steve Coogan, Paul Whitehouse and Lee Mack join Windermere pollution protest

Comedians Steve Coogan, Lee Mack and Paul Whitehouse called sewage pollution a “national scandal” as they joined campaigners to protest about the water quality at Windermere.

The comics performed at The Glebe in Bowness-on-Windermere, Cumbria at an event on Monday for environmental charity Friends of the Lake District to highlight the issue.

Campaigners earlier gathered at Windermere – which at 5.7 sq miles (14.8 sq km) is England largest natural lake – and said that the Lake District had already been damaged by pollution.

Coogan told ITV’s Good Morning Britain: “It is a national scandal.

“The privatised water companies, since they’ve been privatised … have paid out £72bn in investor dividends whilst basically not maintaining the integrity of the lake.”

The star of the Alan Partridge series said: “They should reduce it to zero, there should be no pollution in Windermere, and they are putting out a lot of obfuscation to try to dilute that message.”

Mack, known for BBC programmes Would I Lie to You? and Not Going Out, said: “If the biggest lake is struggling with it, what are other smaller lakes and waterways having to handle?”

Friends of the Lake District, which has campaigned since 1934 to protect the landscapes of Cumbria, is calling for the end of all sewage discharges into the lakes.

There were 246 days in 2022 when sewage was discharged by United Utilities from storm overflows into Windermere, according to Environment Agency data.

Storm overflow systems are large pipes integrated into combined sewer networks, which automatically release sewage into rivers or the sea during heavy rainfall, to prevent waste flooding homes.

Paul Whitehouse, who worked on the BBC documentary series Our Troubled Rivers, said he wanted to see a “joined-up” approach.

He said: “People are rightly appalled by the way they’ve treated our water systems and they’re going to have to shift, they’re going to have to move, and shift policy.

“The ball is in their court – it’s not going to go away, I am optimistic for the future.”

Related: ‘It stinks’: Windermere plagued by blue-green algae as ‘toxic as cobra venom’

Data from the Environment Agency released last week showed there was an average of 825 sewage spills a day into England’s waterways in 2022, with United Utilities discharging sewage into rivers for more than 425,491 hours.

United Utilities said it recognised there were “concerns” and that it was committed to “playing its part” in minimising its impact on the water environment.

The water company said it was accelerating a multimillion-pound improvement programme.

Helen Apps, from United Utilities, told the BBC: “We’ve pulled together a plan to really start tackling this now.

“We’ve announced that we’re going to be fast forwarding £900m worth of investment over the next two years to get a head start on what will be a huge overhaul of the region’s wastewater network”.

However, she said it had faced challenges including the climate crisis and increased tourism.

She said: “That’s why we all have to work together as a community to make sure that we’re treating the wastewater from the systems that United Utilities manages, we’re reducing storm overflows and we’re also looking at what can be done to improve the discharges that come from septic tanks and the runoff from agriculture as well – it will be a joint project.”