Town council to investigate reports of sewage leaking into River Ivel at Biggleswade

Emails sent to the local authority appear to link the spillage with the Biggleswade Water Recycling Centre, an extraordinary town council meeting heard.

But reports of raw sewage spills into the River Ivel during a heatwave 12 months ago were revealed later to be false and caused by faulty monitoring equipment.

Town councillor Duncan Strachan said: “I’ve heard reports of sewage leaking into the River Ivel.

“Do we know anything about that and what action have we taken, if that’s the case? I think it’s quite a serious matter from the emails I’ve seen.

“I’d hope we’d be in contact with Anglian Water and the Environment Agency, if there’s any evidence of that. I’d also hope our head of public realm could go and have a look to see if anything is happening there.

“This is actually quite serious, as it’s a health risk and it must be dealt with as soon as possible.”

BTC’s head of governance and strategic partnerships Karim Hosseini told the meeting: “We’ve had two emails recently from an individual in another parish on this matter.

“We’ll be sharing those emails with members as part of the weekly status report for information later this week,” he confirmed.

Councillor Strachan replied: “It’s no use waiting until Friday (July 31) to have a report back, as we should be doing something actively now.

“The important thing is that action is taken and it’s not left to drift. We’re going to have a hot day on Wednesday (July 29), which will add to the problem if indeed one exists.”

Mayor Jonathan Woodhead explained: “I only saw the email myself late this afternoon (July 28), as well.

“But I’ve a contact at Anglian Water who I met last year when I visited the water recycling plant, which relates to this. I could pass the details on and officers can get on to that, which is probably the best route.

“I don’t know about whether we’ve got contacts at the Environment Agency, but I’ve this one for the water company to pass on. We’ve made a note and we’ll definitely follow up on that.”

Biggleswade’s sewage works is at its capacity and is considered to need upgrading. Anglian Water stated it had released raw sewage into the River Ivel for 372 minutes between July 3 and July 12 last year.

But Conservative North Bedfordshire MP Richard Fuller was assured the reports were because of incorrect data produced by Biggleswade’s event duration monitoring (EDM), which had sent out a stream of false positives.

Anglian Water said there were repeated activations of the monitor at the water recycling centre, which were investigated and escalated for the attendance of an electrician to fix the monitor. There was no evidence of any actual spills.