Dead animals found in Brentford canal amid water quality concerns

“Because of the stagnant water and the fact that the water wasn’t travelling anywhere, we were going past them every day in exactly the same spot.”

Brentford Community Boathouse events officer Kelly Everden, who volunteered on a clean-up operation organised by Keane, said the children who used the canal were worst affected.

“It’s really upsetting on behalf of the children, because that’s not anything that they should ever be faced with, especially with a pet cat,” she said.

Keane said the problem was at least partly down to misconnections, where plumbing from housing developments is wrongly linked to surface water drains rather than sewers, sending untreated waste into waterways.

“The big fly in the ointment is sewage coming into the canal,” he said.

“That gets worse in the summer when the water is moving slowly, and some of that is historic, but also a contemporary misdirecting of sewage into storm drains.”

He said he did not believe this was Hounslow Council’s fault, but that it needed attention “if we do want to develop usage of the canal, particularly for children on the water”.