Council to spend £1m upgrading sewage plans

The funding should help ease a problem with planning backlog across Somerset

A council is to spend £1m upgrading sewage treatment plants in rural areas as part of wider measures to unlock new homes.

Around 12,000 homes across Somerset remain in limbo as a result of the ongoing phosphates crisis.

Somerset Council and developers have agreed to additional mitigation to prevent any net increase in phosphates within the Somerset Levels and Moors catchment area.

Councillor Federica Smith-Roberts said it is a "positive" they are now moving forward.

The council received £9.6m in government grants in December last year which has been allocated to a number of different schemes, the Local Democracy Service reports.

This includes the creation of new wetlands on council-owned land and growing miscanthus grass, which can absorb relatively large quantities of phosphate.

The council’s executive committee has now agreed to spend £1m of this grant on upgrading five sewage treatment plants near Taunton and Wellington, which will allow additional development sites to be unlocked.

By upgrading these five plants, more than 28kg of additional phosphates per year will be removed before they enter the River Parrett and River Tone catchment areas.

Developments within both catchments can now be brought forward, reducing the backlog of planning applications.

Ms Smith-Roberts said the plans were a "good use" of the money to mitigate the impact of phosphates.

She added: "For me, it’s positive that we are now able to move this forward – I believe this has been discussed for at least the last 18 months to make this happen.”

The council said it could not specify which sites would be unlocked through these improvements, stating it would depend on how developers bid for phosphate credits generated by the work.