Updated information on the clearance of planning condition 21 relating to Vistry Homes planning applications 191830 and 210048.

Colchester Borough Council Planning department are minded to part clear condition 21 based on the following information exchange between Anglian Water and the Environment Agency. The Parish Council will take up the offer from CBC of a Video call to discuss the contents of the documents received that you can access from the links below.

Langham Parish Council attended a video-conference call with Colchester Borough Council and presented the attached report demonstrating fundamental flaws in the methodology used by the Environment Agency to demonstrate capacity headroom at the Langham WRC. Unfortunately these representations were dismissed and Colchester Borough Council proceeded to accept the Environment Agency's recommendation to allow half of the Vistry Homes site to be built.

This was a well attended meeting in the Langham Community Centre. About 40 local residents came along to express their concerns about lack of capacity at the Langham WRC and in the local sewerage network.

This was a follow-up meeting to the meeting held on 28th January 2022. It was well attended with a slightly larger audience than the original meeting. Please click on the links below to view the presentation slide and the detailed meeting notes.

Over 60 local residents attended this update meeting, which coincidentally followed on by only a few days from a new round of serious flooding incidents in the village. Residents were dismayed to hear Anglian Water row back on their previous commitment to upgrade Langham's WRC by 2025. Instead, Anglian Water first want to undertake another round of survey activities, looking for infiltration in parts of the sewer network that were apparently not examined as part of last year's survey program. Set-up, delivery and assessment of this new program will take up to another year. If major sources of infiltration can be identified and removed, then the WRC may not need to be upgraded to restore compliance with its flow permit. 

The Parish Council presented flow data from the Langham WRC, for every day of a 7 year period from Jan 2016 to Dec 2022 (this was Anglian Water's own monitoring data, recently forwarded to us by the Environment Agency). The data shows that infiltration levels are huge, causing flows to increase by up to 10 times during wet weather. This has been known about by Anglian Water since at least 2016 (and probably much earlier, noting the expensive £1m sewer re-lining program that was undertaken in 2015). Anglian Water confirmed that Langham's infiltration rates are amongst the very highest in the whole of their network.

Sir Bernard Jenkin listened carefully to the discussions and could fully appreciate why residents' patience was running out. He undertook to write to Anglian Water's CEO demanding a much more urgent emergency response plan.

A number of questions from the public Q&A session were not satisfactorily addressed on the day. Langham Parish Council will be following up these questions with Anglian Water on residents' behalf.

Anglian Water sent out a pair of engineers on the day after the meeting to inspect some Non-Return Valves in Moor Road and also to inspect the Chapel Road Pumping Station. (We have not had any feedback on their findings).

The Colchester Gazette and Essex County Standard reported on the "feisty" public meeting, which led to Anglia TV getting in touch and recording a couple of local news items featuring Martin Bottwood, Luciana Hayward and Peter Dawson.

Sir Bernard Jenkin wrote a strongly worded letter to Peter Simpson (Anglian Water CEO), receiving a prompt but unhelpful reply. Copies of the two letters can be viewed below:

The Environment Agency have recently supplied us with daily Langham WRC flow data for 2014 and 2015 (in addition to the 2016-2022 data previously supplied). This data now confirms that Anglian Water have known about Langham's extreme infiltration problems for at least a decade. The graph below shows the daily flow data for the 9 year period 2014 to 2022, referenced against the 420 cubic metres/day dry weather permit limit.

Anglian Water have yet to reply to this set of detailed financial questions that we sent them on 29th January:

Given Anglian Water's apparent reluctance to supply prompt answers to these direct questions, LPC has sought answers in other public documents that Anglian Water is required to publish within the current water industry regulatory framework. One such document is their Drainage and Wastewater Management Plan, published in May 2023, which sets out a 25 year strategic investment plan for upgrading the sewage network, whilst also dovetailing into a shorter term 5 year business plan for the period 2025 -2030.

The Drainage and Wastewater Management Plan groups their sewage treatment works (or Water Recycling Centres) into geographic catchment areas. Langham WRC sits within the "Essex Rivers Hub" catchment area, along with 161 other WRCs. Each WRC was subject to an initial "Risk Based Screening" assessment, after which the higher risk WRC's (91 out of 162) were then subject to a more detailed "Baseline Risk & Vulnerability Assessment".  Langham WRC was NOT included among the 91 higher risk WRCs.