It follows an incident that saw a backflow of sewage a few years ago
A major government planning change has been called for to avoid sewage flowing into homes. The call has come after concerns were raised on a planning rule that leaves Anglian Water with no options to object to applications that require connecting to a public sewer.
Fenland District Council’s overview and scrutiny committee heard from a representative of Anglian Water on Monday, September 7. Cllr Dee Laws, the portfolio holder for planning, told the committee that Anglian Water is not a statutory body – meaning they must be consulted when considering a planning application. The Conservative councillor said: “This becomes a problem when we have planning applications, especially if they’re major.
“I have every sympathy with Anglian Water and any other water company because they’re faced with this challenge and they do not have options, really.”
She said that under current law, developers have the “right to connect” to any public sewer and the water company is unable to object. The council is currently facing an appeal after refusing plans for up to 200 homes near Coates over concerns around the development’s impact on services and infrastructure.
During a hearing last month, a town councillor said the sewage pumping station had failed in the winter of 2023 – causing a backflow of sewage into properties in the village.
Cllr Laws said that although some developers work with Anglian Water through the right to connect process, others don’t, and suggested the committee write to their MP. She said: “What we need to do is change this in Parliament – I know it’s not going to be easy, I appreciate there’s lots of obstacles ahead, but we’ve got to start somewhere.
“I’ve heard so many members around this table and, obviously elected members, complain about sewage, pipes and connections onto 200 properties, possibly. We’ve got a voice – let’s use it.”
Cllr Alex Miscandlon agreed and said: “It’s an ongoing problem which Anglian Water has to suffer by, I’m not going to say unscrupulous developers, but developers who don’t want to follow the rules.”
The Conservative councillor called the right to connect “a blight” on the development landscape. Grant Tufts, senior policy and public affairs lead at Anglian Water, said that many MPs had written to different governments on the issue.
He said: “The issue is, new governments tend to like less regulation – not more, so we’re up against national government trying to make planning easier, not harder. But that doesn’t mean to say that water companies shouldn’t have more of a say – as you said, there’s some big challenges here and developers have got a lot of weight behind them often.
“We want to work with developers a lot of the time and they’re not all big bad entities – a lot of them are really good and they work with us, but unfortunately there is that underlying entitlement that they’ve got.”
The committee voted unanimously to write a letter to their MP and the Secretary of State outlining the difficulties with the right to connect and for water companies to be made statutory consultees.
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