Contact:
Mike Adams
Adams Hendry Consulting Ltd
7 St Peter Street
Winchester
SO23 8BW

01962 877414
m.adams@adamshendry.co.uk

Adams Hendry has been appointed to provide planning advice on Thames Water’s Thames Tunnel project, working as an integral part of the project team from the Project offices in Paddington.

Though built to last and in good condition, the capital’s sewerage network is now too small to transfer all London’s sewage to treatment works for processing. After rainfall, excess flows have to be able to overflow into the River Thames to prevent untreated sewage backing up onto streets and into properties. The 39 million tonnes of sewage discharged to the river from the capital’s sewers in an average year would fill the Royal Albert Hall over 450 times. These discharges harm wildlife, create litter and risk the health of the growing number of people who use the river for work and pleasure.

The Thames Tunnel is the largest and most challenging of three schemes required to tackle

sewage in the River Thames. It needs to capture storm sewage from the 34 Combined Sewer Overflows discharging directly to the river that the Environment Agency has identified as the most polluting.

Running up to 32 kilometres (20 miles) the tunnel needs to intercept the CSO discharges and transfer them to Thames Water’s Beckton Sewage Treatment Works, the biggest in Europe. It needs to broadly follow the path of the river from west to east, up to 75 meters below ground. The target date for its completion is 2020.

Adams Hendry is a member of the project team engaged in consultation, site selection, review of policy and third party planning applications, and providing planning strategy advice to the project.  Following the completion of Phase 2 consultation which is scheduled to commence in Autumn 2011, Adams Hendry will be working within the project team in preparing the Development Consent Order application and associated documents.