Severn Trent to invest £4.4 billion on its storm overflows across the region
12 March 2024
Severn Trent has announced it will invest over £4.4 billion on its storm overflows to help improve river health across its region.
The Midlands-based water company will make the investment over a 25-year period up to 2050, as part of its plans to reduce spills from storm overflows. Some of this investment forms part of the bigger £12.9b investment programme from 2025 to ensure the security of water supply and will deliver significant improvements in the region’s water and sewerage system.
A total of 2,472 storm overflows will undergo investment – each with its own individual action plan - with a variety of improvements ranging from increasing the capacity of storage tanks to introducing green nature-based solutions. The company is also investing to ensure rivers are monitored closer than ever before with 100% of its storm overflows with monitors – and the company is now analysing around 300m pieces of data a year helping to prioritise investment.
The improvements will be split across Severn Trent’s counties and forms part of the water company’s Storm Overflow Action Plan (SOAP). The plan, which will be regularly updated as improvements are made, will reduce the number of spills into watercourses across the region, ensuring that by 2040 no overflow will spill more than 10 times in an average year in high priority areas, and in all areas by 2045, five years ahead of Government targets.
Severn Trent has been recognised as an industry leader when it comes to environmental performance, achieving the Environment Agency’s highest four-star rating for the fourth year running. And it is confident of securing this for an unprecedented fifth year, continuing to make a positive difference to the environment - whether through delivering bold Get River Positive pledges, improving the biodiversity of 10,000 hectares of land, or launching the world’s first carbon neutral wastewater treatment site in Staffordshire.
Accelerating improvement and investment activities
Severn Trent recently raised £1bn of additional investment from its shareholders to help finance and deliver plans sooner, being able to move and act now to accelerate spend, rather than wait until 2025, when the new investment period starts. More than 70 projects designed to contribute to spills reduction will be completed in 2024/5, worth around £384m including:
As schemes progress more detail will be shared on what action is planned for every storm overflow in every waterbody. A live ‘Event Duration Monitor’ map is due to be launched later this year, which will be a great tool for people to see what investment plans are taking place on all storm overflows across the region.
Our county plans
The £4.4bn investment will be divided up into regions, with the investment for each county.
Other county investments:
The investment forms part of Severn Trent’s Storm Overflow Action Plan, which was published today following discussions with the Government, Defra, the Environment Agency, Ofwat, and other key industry stakeholders.
The plan, which will be updated as improvements are made, reveals steps being taken by the water company to meet targets set out in the Government’s Storm Overflows Discharge Reduction Plan (SODRP).
All prices are stated in 22/23 price base
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