Sarah Lambert took her usual morning swim for 40 minutes off Exmouth town beach before her volunteer shift helping disabled people get access to the water.

A wheelchair user herself, Lambert’s regular sea swims twice a week between the lifeboat station and HeyDays restaurant were the perfect form of exercise for her disability.

It was August 2024, and a dry summer’s day on England’s south-west coast.

At 4.15pm, lifeguards shut the beach, erected red flags and asked people to leave the water after East Devon district council was alerted to a catastrophic burst of the main pipe pumping sewage to the town’s Maer Lane treatment works.

But it was too late for Lambert. She started vomiting later that day and was admitted to hospital suffering life-threatening sepsis after being infected by E coli and Citrobacter bacteria, both of which are commonly found in sewage.