FUTURE housing development in Bromyard is set to receive a significant boost when work to improve the town’s sewage facilities is completed.

Welsh Water is upgrading their Petty Bridge water treatment plant to increase their resilience and ensure its continued operation by replacing pumps and moving the control equipment. It is due to be completed by the beginning of April.

The work should provide sufficient capacity for all existing planning applications and any included in the unitary development plan and subsequent local development framework.

Coun Bernard Hunt said: “It is such good news for Bromyard and it means the housing development can carry on moving ahead. That should do away with all the overflowing and back-up problems suffered for many years.”

A spokesman for Welsh Water said: “We are currently working to upgrade the pumping station in Bromyard in an £350,000 investment programme to safeguard the operation of the pumping station in severe weather and to help alleviate internal flooding to properties in the local area.

“The pumping station pumps waste-water from the town of Bromyard into the nearby waste-water treatment works. As far as possible, our systems work through gravity, but in areas such as this where flow through gravity is not possible, we use pumps to move waste-water around. The decision to upgrade this station was taken following the severe summer storms in 2007, which saw significant flooding in the local area.”