News

Severn Trent called in an unusual special team to help carry out an inspection on the bridge to Tittesworth Water.

The water company, which serves 4.5 million customers across the Midlands and into north and mid-Wales, brought in a team of divers to carry out the routine inspection on the bridge, which provides a main route through the area as well as access to the Severn Trent tourist attraction, making sure the foundations and culverts were all in top shape.

The inspection forms part of a programme of work the company is carrying out to inspect more than 100 bridges across its region.

Simon Carey, who is working on the project for Severn Trent, explains: “We’re undertaking a huge piece of work to carry out inspections at hundreds of different locations across the Midlands and Wales to make sure all our bridges are structurally sound.

“While it sounds straightforward, it’s often really difficult to access some of these – especially when they’re located above our reservoirs or rivers – and we’ve even used drones in the past to get a closer, safer look than would otherwise be possible.

“That’s why in this case we called in the team of divers to help us at Tittesworth. They were able to get into the reservoir and get underwater footage of the structures that we just can’t see from dry land.“On this occasion though, if you want to have a look at what’s under the water there’s only one place you can go, and, as this is a particularly important bridge that’s a main through road and also provides access to our visitor centre which sees thousands of visitors every month, we got the diving team in.”

The reservoir was first built as early as 1858, although the visitor centre wasn’t opened until 1998.

Tittesworth Water pumps an average of 28 million litres of water a day and has the capacity to provide up to 45 million litres a day. 

This water is then treated at the nearby Tittesworth water treatment works and distributed to households and businesses in parts of Stoke-on-Trent, Leek and the Staffordshire Moorlands.

For more information about the site, visit www.stwater.co.uk/my-severn-trent/our-visitor-sites/tittleswort-water