Thames Water has refused to reveal how many times it has pumped sewage in The Cut this week, or for how long – after indications that it could have discharged for more than 24 hours in total.

The company’s sewage treatment works at Ryehurst Lane last discharged waste water into the river for almost six hours, between 8:30pm on January 3 and 2:15am on January 4.

That’s according Thames Water’s online interactive map, which shows the most recent discharge at each of its sewage treatment works.

The News observed that the Bracknell works also discharged for some four and a half hours during Storm Henk, and at least twice again on the morning of Wednesday January 3.

READ MORE: Thames Water pollution among reasons Bracknell rivers suffer

And a Labour Party campaigner claimed to have seen that it had discharged for at least 17 hours since the early hours of Tuesday January 2.

Peter Swallow, who hopes to become a Labour candidate in this year’s general election posted on Twitter: “17 hours later and @thameswater are STILL discharging sewage into the Cut,” at 5:20pm that afternoon.

A spokesperson said Thames Water's treatment works had been impacted by Storm Henk and ‘higher than average long-term rainfall.’ They added the company wants to ‘lead the way with our transparent approach’ to releasing information on sewage discharges into river.

But the spokesperson said the public and press would have to pay for it to reveal how many times its Bracknell treatment works had discharged sewage into The Cut and for how long.

Thames Water has come under fire over the past year for discharging untreated sewage into rivers.

The water company says discharges usually happen when treatment works are unable to cope with the volume of water flowing into them, especially during heavy rain.

With Storm Henk and subsequent heavy rain hitting Berkshire, the Bracknell treatment works at Ryehurst Lane has discharged into the cut on several occasions in the first week of January.

READ MORE: Thames Water sewage discharges in Berkshire during Storm Henk

But because Thames Water’s online map only shows the most recent discharge, the public can't see precisely how many discharges there have been or for how long.

Yet Thames Water refused to give this information when asked by the News. A spokesperson told reporters they would have to submit a potentially-expensive environmental information request, charged at a rate of £25 for each hour that staff spend answering it.

A spokesperson said: “We want to lead the way with our transparent approach to data.

“We’re the first company to provide live alerts for all untreated discharges throughout our region and this ‘near real-time’ data is available to customers as a map on our website and is also available through an open data platform for third parties, such as swimming and environmental groups to use.”