Governments just love to ‘pledge’ new council house building. Keir Starmer was going to build “300,000 new social and affordable houses” in 10 years. Andy Burnham says he’s going to deliver “the biggest council house building programme since the post-war period”. Welcome to Downing Street, Prime Minister, and say hello to the interminable delays of house-building – outside of flashy, private high-rise apartments in Manchester.
Planning delays and the rising cost of building usually get the blame for housing holdups. But sewage disposal is fast becoming a serious issue. Now a crazy dodge by desperate developers seems sure to lead to infighting in Whitehall.
A year ago my local MP Richard Fuller led a visit to Biggleswade’s 1960s sewage works – or the Biggleswade Water Recycling Centre (BWRC), as Anglian Water prefers us to call it. That’s recycling, as in: we tip it into the Ivel River (hopefully, treated well enough – but see David’s photo at the bottom).
The unmanned works struck the group as decrepit, though the tour was pre-arranged: weeds, cable-ties, gaffer-tape, lash-ups. But at least it was functioning: a quiet mid-morning in a scorching July, and sewage was gushing in at 100 litres a second – though far more can arrive in wet weather (see the intake stains in the photo above). And since I’d called round a few months earlier, the welcome board had been washed.
An efficient young engineer showed us around, explaining that he manages over 30 such sites. “Any of them as run-down as this?” I asked. “Don’t get it wrong,” he said, “this is one of my best. Many of the others are far worse.” This was what under-investment looks like in real life, not just as headlines.
Wet weather greatly increases BWRC’s load because so many rainwater pipes drain into the ‘combined sewers’, as they do in London – only modern developments have separate drains for foul and for grey water. Biggleswade’s works is certified to handle 190 litres per second and needs all of that capacity when it rains: nobody knows what will happen when 1,900 new houses which already have outline planning permission are connected. As legally, they will have to be.
This is why in late 2024 Anglian Water, like some other utilities, switched from routinely approving planning applications to always objecting – except at the few places where it has a modern sewage works, for example Milton Keynes. The logjam developers face was described in Building magazine last October: nationally, tens of thousands of new homes can’t be built because they can’t get sewer connections.
In Upper Caldecote village, just a mile from Biggleswade WRC, a developer applied last year to build 25 homes right next to the local main sewer, and Anglian of course objected – pipe network adequate but sewage works overloaded, we can’t connect you. This June the developer proposed a workaround: forget Anglian’s sewer, he’d go off-grid and build a Package Treatment Plant (PTP) serving the new estate. Ideally these PTPs empty their part-treated liquid into a reed bed, which then drains to a watercourse.
I happen to know about them, having had to install a PTP at great expense at our Connemara cottage, miles from any sewer. They smell, they need constant electricity for circulation and air pumps, and solids have to emptied by vacuum tanker. Under the ‘sewage hierarchy’ planners usually approve PTPs only where there’s absolutely no other solution – a mountain in the way, or as in our Irish case, no sewer at all
Here at Caldecote the developer is proposing to disperse semi-treated liquid from two dozen houses into a field alongside – there’s no watercourse nearby. There’d be quarterly inspections of the system, the solids to be removed by tankers, a private management company to coordinate all this indefinitely – because utilities won’t take over a facility they didn’t build.
Backup batteries to keep the pumps running in a power cut, most likely self-starting diesel generators; waterlogging of the drainage field in wet weather, possible pollution of groundwater – the fragility and expense of all this is obvious, and one dreads to think what mortgage lenders would make of it. One home might delay flushing its toilets while fixing a problem with its private PTP, but a whole estate?
Anglian Water has 1,128 sewage works, most of them without even a man and a dog on site. Right now it’s spending £7.9 million on replacing 800 metres of water main in Biggleswade (that blue pipe), causing traffic chaos, and has no plan or budget to upgrade the sewage works until its 2030-35 spending round – and not necessarily then. Infrastructure work, UK-style, is amazingly expensive.
Central Government is leaning on local planning authorities to identify sites for new housing – more than 25,000 in Central Bedfordshire by 2050, please – but will these all be required to use composting toilets? Carpeting the country with polluting private sewage plants ought to be inconceivable – what on earth would the Victorians have said? – but who will mandate the upgrades and then find the engineers, money and builders to future-proof the nation’s sewage works?
Roughly 30,000 planned homes are stalled in England for lack of sewer connection, and at least 15,000 in Northern Ireland.
Press releases and fantasy 10-year plans may play well with the public (thank you, Mr Burnham) but they don’t stop the shit coming down that pipe, and the answer can’t possibly be thousands of private PTPs. The squabble in Whitehall between those who are desperate to build homes and those whose job is to look after our land and rivers is going to be messy.
Anglian Water was contacted for comment.
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Don’t forget the enormous backlog of building and renovating caused by Natural England’s Nutrient Neutrality regulations too.
So that final image in the article: Nutrient Neutral? I’d bet not.
How the hell does it cost £7.9million to replace 800 metres of water main, almost £10,000 per meter? Is the pipe gold plated?
Last year the sewer in the street where I live was replaced, it didn’t seem to be a major pipe that would of carried waste from thousands of homes. For some reason it took at least 3 months for about 200 metres of pipe to be replaced. Most days there were at least 3 people on site, I’m not sure they were all working, and at least one section of the road was dug up replaced then dug up again a month later. The road was closed throughout the works (hopefully this upset at least on EV owner who couldn’t charge their car at home and had to use far more expensive public charging points) so it wasn’t to help traffic flow. Given the amount of time it took the cost must of been pretty high. Presumably most of the older parts of the sewage system that consists of older metal pipes that’ll slowly corrode will need replacing at some point, goodness knows how much this will cost if it takes 3 months to replace 200 metres.
How the hell does it cost £7.9million to replace 800 metres of water main, almost £10,000 per meter? Is the pipe gold plated?
On a sewage works recently the task of moving some branches from a railway sidings that would have taken me half an hour. (An hour if I dragged the job out) Ended up taking four people all morning. The reason? Two people had to slowly pick up one branch at a time while another to had to scan for signs of field mouse activity.
This is why nothing happens without a ridiculously high price tag and this why this country is so unproductive. No one dares to give the go ahead for anything without consulting several different departments first in an attempt to cover their arses. And ultimately when something goes wrong it’s Impossible to find who said to go ahead in the first place.
Sounds like the time the council fitted new smoke alarms to my flat.
One person fitted the alarms, another person took pictures to prove the work had been done and a young woman stood there looking pretty. I wish I was joking but it’s a case of it being so crazy you couldn’t make it up.
I have put in 3 private systems for 3 builds I have done over the last 30 years. A day’s work for JCB driver and me on each system and the last one was when I was 69 years old. These were full systems from bathroom position to sample chamber before and including the herringbone soakaway. This is up in North East Scotland where we seem to get things done a lot more quickly.
However, as an ex Planning Enforcement Officer, I have seen horrendous shared private systems put in for say 8 houses where the owners have to share costs of repair and maintenance and they cannot agree on payment as some blame others for causing problems. The system does not get maintained properly and that is a nightmare.
There must be infrastructure investment from the Government before any worthy statements are made by out of touch and incompetent politicians on more housing, however much it is needed.
I have often thought about just how many new homes can be connected to existing sewers, water mains and electricity distribution systems.
I don’t know the answer, but it certainly isn’t infinity.
Under investment is failing to build additional capacity to cope with ten million additional daily deposits. Under maintenance is failing to keep the assets there are up to proper standard.
Please PLEASE use words properly. Investment is for additional capacity for something we absolutely need OR is is for a retuen in the form of lower ongoing costs or to achieve some specific identified higher need.
Just spending is NOT investment. At least it is only in the brain of Gordon Brown (who popularised such use) and the PPE journalists who repeat it from every NGO and government press release.
Given that a lot of the sewage network also carries rainwater I wonder how many parts of the network are being upgraded to cope with the increase in torrential rain that’s predicted by dodgy climate models but will almost certainly not happen. This would be an obvious example of spending that isn’t investment since the upgrades won’t be needed.
None in the regulated structure I think.
But I am aware of a 9 house development in the driest part of the country for which the planners demanded and “consultants” duly certified as necessary a large holding pond for all the water from rain on roofs and paved roadways.
I have never seen water laying in this pond.
I am old enough and I recall my late father talking about his experience of rainfall and there has never been any on the land in question.
Why do we need so much more housing – the birth rate has been below replacement for a long time. We should need less, not more, and prices should be dropping.
Apart from the obvious reason (which comes in by train, boat and plane every goddam day), the divorce rate is very high, and lifespans (had) increased until recent years. Both of these factors increase housing demand, albeit for smaller units
But divorce does not increase sewage, unless you know something I don’t.
Yes those are fair points but I am not convinced that they would have made a significant difference- I still think that immigration is the main driver.
AI says: The cumulative net migration total to the UK since 1990 is approximately 7.2 to 7.6 million people.
Given that most new arrivals come from 3rd world shit holes and have pretty shit attitudes e.g. towards women/teenage girls it’s hardly surprising we need a lot more sewers to cope with the amount of shit in this country.
Because between the mid-1990s and today we had a population explosion – 20% increase = 12 million aka diversity & multi-culturalism.
It was logistically impossible to plan, fund, allocate resources, and provide housing, utilities and other things in that timescale with that rate of increase.
In many areas, “the Victorians” would have used private sewers. Indeed, even the Elizabethan 2’s did in the late 20th century. I grew up in a street on the Gower peninsula where we all had cesspits, that were occasionally emptied by the Rural District Council. They were replaced by common sewers built by the water authority in the late 1960s, though. No sewage recycling there – the waste water is chucked out into the Bristol Channel.
This is a good article. I work for a water utility (South West Water) and all the sewage works are pretty much at maximum capacity. Yet the houses keep connecting and then people complain when the combined sewage overflows (CSO) are going into the rivers. There’s only so much you can do to expand the capacity of a site. It usually involves adding chemicals to aid the settlement. This comes with its own potential issues. The only way to expand the overall volume the site takes is to increase the size of the pipes feeding it. This is not a question of the water companies not paying for it. It’s about a few decades of disruption which would have everyone complaining. And the water companies genuinely don’t make enough money to pay the tens of billions it would require. Digging up every road in every town is just the start. Redirecting peoples drain water to not go done the sewers would send it somewhere else. This then becomes a problem for the flood defences. Not the water utilities problem but the Environment agency (ie, the tax payer) I don’t know how this problem is solved. But I do know that… Read more »
Good news. I can solve the problem.
Stop large scale immigration and send home all those here who do not pay at least £x in tax per annum.
That would work. Sometimes the simplest answer is the right one. When are you running for government so I can vote for you.
Exactly.
Problem – Too many people producing too much piss and shit.
Solution – Reduce the number of people.
Which people? – THE ONES WHO SHOULDNT BE HERE ANYWAY!!!
Send them home anyway tax or not tax.
I used to work in the area of housing development. 50 years ago, one architect or technician could work o the drawings for a housing estate and do all the plans for drainage, which had to be separate foul and surface water. It was always difficult to get planning permission for any housing because of Nimby councillors who were often unable to read a plan, let alone say yes to anything. Of course the sewage would then connect into the Victorian combined central system and go to the sewage works where solids were taken by ship off the coast and dumped into the sea for fish to eat. These days there are so many environmental and safety regulations that become more expensive and difficult every year that only large development companies can get through using around 9 specialists to defeat councils. Of course though, when it is the council’s own project, things are easier. The dreadful council housing and block of flats were built using technicians in council so called architects departments. These have mostly closed and so councils rely on forcing developers to provide ‘afford’ housing alongside very expensive houses for sale. Unfortunately the affordable ones are then occupied… Read more »
Holy shit
It takes only one teaspoon of sewage added to a barrel of wine to be left with a barrel of sewage.
Burnham is the type to believe a teaspoon of wine added to a barrel of sewage provides a barrel of wine.
How does it work in France with their Fosse Septiques?
Expensively
Many properties in rural France have Fosse-septiques, even in towns.
When I lived there, I had a new one (two-chamber 4 000 litre)installed for 4 500€ (2005). Large filter bed draining into a 45metre drain into a field.
Regs say to be pumped out every 4 years – cost variable depending on contractor, but around 150€ to 200€.
Over the last 30 years, the Establishment has imported around 12 million people. The population has (officially) expanded from approx 58 million to approx 70 million.
Whilst I have reasonable confidence that the official figure of 58 million in 1995 was probably fairly accurate, I don’t believe at all that 70 million today is. I suspect it is far higher.
In that 30 years, not one additional reservoir has been built. And neither has the water transfer system that was being discussed a couple of decades ago.
ALL our basic infrastructure is old and is coping with a population that has been vastly expanded from the original design capacity.
It’s only a matter of time until everything collapses.
I’ve just spent 2 months installing a new sewage treatment plant for my house, based on its certification the water output is 97.5pc pure. It can be discharged into water course or land drain. Basically better then the actual industrial sewage treatment plants.
The main problem is not only the amount of sxxt its the stuff the plebs flush down the toilet, my friend works for Southern water and apparently they remove several skips of “Rag” from each plant weekly. Fabric of just about any origin, and all the other plastics and random garbage has to be separated from that on top.
So the plant proposed for the estate would function along the same lines and as long as maintained, used as intended not as a skip for the inhabitents, would be perfectly good, its the kind of installation eco parks and glamping sites put in.
The country simply doesnt work anymore so providing for yourself is the best way now.
What are “social” houses – those provided free for the lazy, non-productive dregs of society, paid for by picking the pockets of the most productive.
Council houses were built between the wars and after WWII, to provide housing stock for rent to replace bomb damaged properties and slums – for people who WORKED. Private companies wanted to sell not to rent. Council rents were not “affordable” they were not low.
What is an “affordable” house? One that is sold or rented at a loss? Who carries the loss? Commercial enterprises won’t, so the taxpayer must.
The problem with “affordable” houses is the asset inflation caused by Socialist policies since 1945, and the loony Net Zero rules in reading building costs, making mortgages to buy a decent first-time buy beyond the reach of most young people.
So, after 40 to 50 years of nationalised water companies, lack of investment as a consequence resulting in inadequate water supply and sewage services, sold to private companies, the answer is… drum roll… renationalise them. What’s that saying about repeating something expecting a different result?
Then, bring into the Country 12 million people within 20 years for this inadequate utility to deal with.
And price cap water charges so private water companies (Boo! Hiss! cannot make “excess” profit and CEO’s (burn them!) cannot make £million in bonuses, etc.
Price caps always result in a shortage of whatever is being price-controlled. Unless water charges go up, the money for investment will not be there.
Ofwat is the regulator. It can still regulate without price caps to ensure increased water charges = increased investment. The problem is it’s political – the whingy-whiney population don’t want to pay for what they use, because it would be a “rip off”.
I saw a cartoon some rime ago which sums up our situation entirely. A man digging a hole in the road, around him are five men in suits holding clipboards, they say to cut costs we must retire him
Back in my childhood my parents took me to a sewage works open day at our local one near Croydon. It was an instructive visit around to works from the first arrival from the sewer system to the discharge into the River Wandle. There was laboratories checking the quality of the process – not sure if they were offering a chance to drink the very clear output. But, with all the talk of heavy rain overwhelming the plants and causing untreated outflows – working in Victoria I recall seeing swingflap outlets discharging into the Thames after heavy rain something not very nice – we were shown some huge tanks where they stored to surge flow until it could be processed. Look on google earth and those tanks are no longer there.