Severn Trent’s £450m programme to cut spills from storm overflows is progressing at pace right across the Midlands.

The company announced the industry leading plan in May 2024, where it set out to reduce spills by 20% across 900 locations this year alone through a series of varied projects and interventions.

Moving quickly the company is making great progress and is on track to reach its commitment to get the impact from storm overflows to near zero and is confident in halving the number of spills from them by 2030.

So far, the accelerated programme of work has seen*:

• 100 valves installed across networks to prevent flooding when river levels rise;
• 30 new storage tanks built and installed, some that can hold up to 200,000 litres, to hold more water during heavy rain; around 350 more to be installed.
• 170 bespoke local engineering enhancements, including opportunities to repurpose existing storage capacity to create more storage.
• Five cutting-edge SAF units in place that help treat more wastewater and reduces spills, with 19 more scheduled.
• Nine reedbed’s created, with plans to develop 45 more that help to naturally treat wastewater bringing more benefits to rivers;
• Launched a community trial looking to install 8,000 free water butts to customers to help create more storage at the source, this also has the additional benefit and can help reduce flood risk.

Neerja Upadhyay, Head of river health enhancement at Severn Trent said: “Since kicking off only a few months ago, our teams have been making some radical improvements that we’re already seeing benefits from. Increased storage on sites, repurposing existing parts of the network, installing valves and making network enhancements; is all helping us make progress to reduce spills and improve river health, which is exactly what we and our customers want.”

Severn Trent’s £450m investment is running alongside the company’s other work to reduce spills, and enhance rivers, including a multi-million-pound investment programme as well as an international competition to source new innovative ideas.

It’s also set to invest billions into river health, with £1.2bn specifically on storm overflows as part of its recently rated ‘Outstanding’ plans for the next five-year business plan.

“Our customers can trust that we’re taking our role on rivers seriously, and we’re not stopping, or slowing down until the job is done and we’ve reduced spills dramatically,” adds Neerja. “We’re going further and faster, and the work we’ve done already makes us feel confident that we’ll reach our targets and do what it takes to improve the rivers we know and love.”  

Severn Trent has also again recently been awarded the highest 4-star status in the Environmental Performance Assessment (EPA) for a fifth consecutive year by the Environment Agency. The first time this has ever been achieved.

To keep track of the progress made, and the work taking place across the Midlands a dedicated YouTube playlist has been created.

*At time of writing.