Shropshire parish council willing to take sewerage row to European Parliament
A Shropshire village is in danger of dying because of the failure of a water company to improve its sewerage system, its parish council says.
Weston Rhyn Parish Council says it is prepared to go all the way to the European Parliament to get Welsh Water to spend money improving the ageing mains sewers through the village.
But the water company says the housing developers should contribute to improvements. Although the village gets its fresh water supply from Severn Trent Water its sewerage is dealt with by Welsh Water.
Recently a planning application for 70 homes at Aspen Grange in Weston Rhyn was refused by Shropshire Council after comments from Welsh Water that it was concerned about the scale of development and the impact on the public sewer.
Ralph Cooper, chairman of the parish council, said Welsh Water wanted developers to pay for the improvements to the sewerage system.
"Developers are responsible for anything that connects into the main line but it should be Welsh Water that ensures that mains sewer pipe can cope. We want the 19th century sewerage system brought up to 21st century standards," he said.
Rhidian Clement, Principal Planner for Welsh Water, said: "In regard to Aspen Grange we had concerns over the scale of development and the resulting impact of the foul discharges from the site upon the integrity of the public sewer and our service to existing customers. However in order to facilitate development we confirmed to the local planning authority that we would support the imposition of a planning condition to secure the undertaking of a hydraulic modelling assessment which would be funded by the developer."
