UK-First Sewage Plant 'Supercharges' Treatment Near Shrewsbury

SHREWSBURY, England — A new £6 million sewage treatment center outside Shrewsbury is the first of its kind in the UK, and Severn Trent says it is designed to 'supercharge' the way wastewater is cleaned before it is returned to the environment.

The Monkhouse Sewage Treatment facility treats and cleans waste water to a quality that is almost the same as that of a river, according to the water company. The project comes as water companies face growing public and regulatory pressure over sewage spills and river health across the UK.

Severn Trent said the number of sewage spills into its waterways fell by 41% in 2025. The company attributed the decline mainly to a wider £2 billion investment program that includes the Monkhouse center, along with dry weather in Shropshire.

At the heart of the plant is a technology called a Membrane Aerated Biofilm Reactor (MABR), which targets ammonia in sewage. Gareth Mead, a river rangers manager, said the system allows the team to 'force more sewage through the works.'

'It gives us a lot more capacity, which is really great for growth in the area — Shrewsbury, like a lot of towns, is growing,' he said. 'It also means we can treat more sewage when we get rainfall, and that will really help spill reduction.'

Mead said sewage is treated this way at all centers, but the new plant 'supercharges that process.' The MABR system, he explained, directs oxygen to the bacteria that remove ammonia. 'We get a super-low concentration of ammonia that we return to the river, so it's great for the river, great for the wildlife downstream,' he said.

He added that the team has been seeing duckweed in the treatment process, a sign he described as unusual and evidence that the system is working effectively. 'It's working really well,' Mead said. 'We're seeing duckweed in this treatment process, which you really don't see. It's showing that it's really effective at treating ammonia, which is the thing we want to get out of the sewage.'

The technology was trialed at an innovation center just outside Redditch, but Monkhouse is the first site where it has been rolled out at full scale.

Not everyone is convinced. Sarah Kirby, of the river pressure group Up Sewage Creek (USC), said Severn Trent has not been transparent enough about its work at the center, prompting members to ask many questions as they try to determine whether the operation is effective and offers value for money.

Kirby said she has not seen much change on the ground yet. 'Severn Trent Water haven't been very transparent about what they're doing, how much it's going to cost,' she said. 'We have been asking a lot of questions over quite a long time, so that we can ensure that what they're doing is effective and cost effective. There's been a massive lack of transparency, which hopefully is beginning to change.'

She said agencies needed to work together with communities using a 'catchment-based approach.'

Mead accepted that the company could do more and said it would continue to invest. 'There's still more we can do — we're not going to stop there, we're going to keep on going with this,' he added.

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Severn Trent Water