Anglian Water is the second worst company in England and Wales when it comes to polluting the environment, says a report by the Environment Agency.

The firm paid out £71,250 in pollution fines and appeared in court six times last year.

The only other firm that performed worse was Thames Water Utilities which paid out £79,000 in fines. The news comes as the agency considers taking Anglian Water to court again over a pollution spill at Stambridge two months ago.

A decision on whether to prosecute the firm for flooding thousands of gallons of waste water out of burst pipes at the state-of-the-art Stambridge sewage works on May 19 is expected imminently.

The firm described the incidents as "regrettable" but said there had been significant improvements in operations in the past 12 months.

Spokesman Graham Frankland said: "We take a responsible stance on all these issues but we maintain a huge system, more than a thousands sewage treatment works in the UK, and things can go wrong from time to time. The fact is whenever there is a problem we immediately contact the Environment Agency.

"These incidents are regrettable but in the past year we have had a 27 per cent reduction in the number of pollution incidents."

Environment Agency chairman Sir John Harman said the vast majority of prosecutions they carried out were for avoidable pollution.

He said they were disappointed at the level of fines imposed by the courts on companies found guilty of pollution.

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.