Approval granted for Wessex’s £100m sewage plant expansion

Wessex Water’s largest wastewater treatment plant in Bristol has received the green light from planners for a £100 million expansion.

Work is due to begin on the upgrades next year to ensure the site has capacity to serve the growing population for the next 25 years.

Storage and processing infrastructure will be added to Avonmouth water recycling centre that processes waste from Bristol, south Gloucestershire, Bath and north Somerset

Project delivery manager, Simon Osborne, said: “Our site at Avonmouth is already the largest in our region, but by enhancing our capacity and operations there to treat more sewage and wastewater, we can help to ensure that treatment continues to safeguard the environment by maintaining the highest standards for release back into the Severn Estuary.’’

The company will add tanks and biological reactors to land it already owns to ramp up the amount of waste the plant can process.

This expansion will be critical to the company’s efforts to reduce the automatic operation of storm overflows, which currently are triggered during periods of heavy rain that can overwhelm sewage plants.

“While upgrading our operations to meet the needs of greater Bristol is a primary driver of this scheme, this is so much more than merely an infrastructure project,” Osborne added.

The expansion is anticipated to be operational by 2028. The company has invested more than £70 million on new sewerage infrastructure in recent years to allow for population growth, which has involved the construction of 11.5km of new sewerage tunnels.

Approval was granted after a five-year consultation process to extensively gauge the views of the public and stakeholders about Wessex’s plans for the site expansion.

From 2025-30, the company has proposed its biggest ever investment programme with c£3.5 billion of work set out in PR24 business plans submitted to Ofwat last month.