Severn Trent unveils £13bn plan for future of the region
Improving river quality, cutting leaks, creating thousands of jobs, and securing water supplies are all part of a £12.9bn five-year plan unveiled by the region’s water company.
Severn Trent’s Chief Executive, Liv Garfield, has announced the plans – which run from 2025 to 2030. If approved by Ofwat the proposals will see an investment that will ‘broadly double’ that spent over the past five years.
The company said that all the investment is ‘new’ and not investment that should have been made previously.
The water firm said that the proposals would see the average bill rise from £1.15 a day, to £1.42 a day by 2030 – although the company has also raised a significant amount from private investors.
Speaking at an event outlining the proposal, Mrs Garfield said that they were ‘concious that any increase is not popular’ – particularly in the midst of a cost of living crisis, and said that company would be providing £550m of support for those struggling with their bills.
Included in the proposals are ambitions to cut leakage of 23 per cent by 16 per cent – partly using 35,000 sensors across its network, to raise the capacity of the Draycot Dam in Rugby, while spending around £61m at Shrewsbury’s Shelton site with the aim of treating an extra 18 million litres of water a day.
Mrs Garfield said there were multiple aims, including moving the company to net zero, and making sure there is enough water to cope with an expanding population – and the impact of hot weather on supplies, as seen last year.
The chief executive committed to moving ‘faster’ than government targets on river health, pledging to be ‘close as possible’ to making sure it is responsible for none of the factors that mean rivers are not ecologically healthy.
Part of the investment is increasing capacity at treatment works which will reduce the number of sewage overflow discharges into rivers.
