Five-year sewage smell still hitting Lady's Mile

Aerial view of Lady's Mile Holiday Park showing the outdoor pool and rows of touring caravans and tents

5 September 2026

Some visitors to Lady’s Mile have packed up mid-stay because of a sewage smell the park says has come and gone for five years. It is not there every week. When it arrives it can last a day, or several days in a row, and it hits part of the touring fields hard enough that people leave.

Operations manager Stephen Brown told the BBC his team has contacted South West Water repeatedly. “They’re just ignoring it,” he said. “It’s affecting our business, it’s affecting the touring side of the business and has done for about five years. During that time frame we have people that have decided to leave because of it and it’s just not on.”

The park sits on Exeter Road, a short walk from Dawlish Warren beach. A blockage was cleared in the past and the air improved for a while. Then the pong returned.

Aerial view of Lady's Mile and nearby sewage treatment works — Timaru Sewage Treatment Works in close proximity to the Lady's Mile Holiday Park

Newton Abbot MP Martin Wrigley visited and said the smell “hits you in the nose”. “When we got out of the car, the pong here was just unbelievable,” he told BBC Spotlight. He likened it to a field where a farmer was spreading muck, and pointed to the sewage works across the road. Five years of the same problem, he said, was “just unacceptable”.

Rosie Dawson, the county councillor for Dawlish, said she was appalled it had run on so long. “We have this foul smell still and this lack of communication to this huge business, it’s the heart of Dawlish,” she said. “Numerous, numerous complaints. South West Water are not even responding.”

South West Water said it was aware of odour reports around Dawlish Warren. Work at Timaru Sewage Treatment Works had caused “some temporary smells”, but that work is finished and the plant is back in normal operation. The company blamed hot, dry weather for making sewer smells more noticeable, and said its investigation “indicated the smell is linked to a private sewer network” for which it is not responsible.

The Environment Agency said it had received no reports of odour in Dawlish Warren. Until someone owns the pipe, the park is left with a holiday field that, on some days, smells like sewage.