Yorkshire Water "Accelerates" Scarborough and Whitby Works

Wednesday, 6 December 2023 06:00

By Matthew Pells

The company says works that could help improve bathing water quality will take place next year.

Yorkshire Water says it is bringing forward an upgrade programme at the Wheatcroft Sewerage Outfall near Scarborough.

The work will be carried out as part of efforts to improve local bathing water quality.

Faye Cossins is the firms coastal delivery and engagement manager and says the work will take place next year.

Upgrades to the Wheatcroft Sewerage Outfall near Scarborough will take place next year.

Yorkshire Water says it has accelerated planned works as part of efforts to improve the bathing water quality.

The company says it is also bringing forward works in Whitby

Faye Cossins is the firms coastal delivery and engagement manager.

In an update to local councillors the Yorkshire Water team said the company intended to meet new government targets for reducing storm overflows several years ahead of scheduled.

But local Councillor Rich Maw questioned the scheme, highlighting previous efforts to tackle the issues in Scarborough and questioning the timescales for the new plan.

In their report to councillors Yorkshire Water said:

"This asset management period, (AMP7, 2020-2025) we had already planned to invest £147m in reducing discharges. We also announced, earlier this year, an additional £180m of investment. £100m of this is new investment from our shareholders.

We have now identified 180 high discharge sites for this additional investment, and we are now conducting on site investigations and modelling to determine where we can have the largest impact to reduce spills. The target of this investment is to reduce spills 20% by 2025 from our 2021 figures. In Scarborough we are accelerating the scheme to invest in Wheatcroft CSO as a priority. This scheme is due to start development in March 2024 and be complete by December 2024.

In August 2022 the Government published their Storm Overflow Discharge Reduction Plan, which includes 3 key targets. The first regards high priority sites, such as SSSIs and nature reserves, the second targets bathing waters and the third is an overall target storm overflows will not be permitted to discharge above an average of 10 rainfall events per year by 2050.

To ensure we meet or exceed these targets we have created a plan for storm overflow investment through to 2050. This includes over £1bn of investment between 2025 and 2030 including improving our coastal assets that impact on Bathing Waters by reducing them to meet the guidelines of 2 spills or less per bathing season. At present a programme is in development for delivering this work and we can provide further updates on specific assets to Scarborough when they are available.

In addition to the capital investment, we are contributing to fund an intensive Environment Agency investigation throughout the Summer of 2024 to identify potential influences on poor water quality and work together with the partnership to take action.

We are also offering our education outreach sessions to a number of selected Schools within Scarborough, particularly within the Wheatcroft area, in line with our capital scheme to raise awareness of the ongoing work and how we can all do our bit."