Multi-AMP plan overcomes Anglian wastewater objections for 500 homes

(by Verity Mitchell)

Government has claimed that its Water Delivery Taskforce has successfully stepped in to bring together local planning authorities, regulators and Anglian Water to agree a path to more home building. Anglian Water had previously objected to several large-scale developments due to concerns over wastewater treatment capacity.

Through the new approach, Anglian Water is working with developers and planning authorities at an earlier stage in the process to enable large scale developments of over 500 homes, allowing infrastructure upgrades to be funded and delivered in a phased way over multiple investment cycles.

The Taskforce said it has opened up conversations around a potential new water recycling centre for Grantham – plus there is the existing construction of a strategic pipeline and work on a 20-million-litre storage reservoir to allow for thousands more homes in the years ahead. 

Anglian Water said of the development: "This is an encouraging step forward in enabling us to deliver infrastructure upgrades over multiple investment cycles.”

In addition to its current £11bn AMP8 programme, Anglian has submitted a cost change re-opener request to Ofwat for a further £346m for water storage, further growth in customers and asset health. As stated at its recent full-year results presentation, this is too significant a sum to be funded under existing plans, so Anglian, like its industry peers, is asking for additional revenues to support the investment.