Pressure is building on Thames Water to extend their super sewer consultation - the Mayor of London has written to the Water Minister, Richard Benyon MP, asking him to ‘instruct Thames Water to extend the consultation period to the end of March 2012’. 

Thames Water has not said how much the expanded Kirtling Street option would save or whether it would add to the £4.1 billion cost of building the tunnel on commercially confidential grounds - raising interesting questions about water regulator Ofwat's proposal for the utilities to conduct extensive stakeholder engagement consultations on their upcoming AMP6 Business Plans.

Hammersmith & Fulham (H&F) Council is backing the Mayor’s calls as the local authority engineers say that the sewer construction site that Thames Water has earmarked for Kirtling Street, in Wandsworth, could be expanded.

Kirtling Street is already one of three main construction sites needed for the 20 mile long concrete tunnel and council engineers say that by expanding it slightly the threat to Carnwath Road and Barn Elms could be minimised – or even removed completely.

H&F Council engineers say that by driving directly from Kirtling Street, in Wandsworth, to Acton Storm tanks Thames Water might be able to bypass the need to use either of the two currently threatened sites and minimise disruption to residents in the process.

The Council says the total drive length would only be 2.7milles longer than the current Thames Water plan and money could be saved by buying just one giant boring machine, which cost around £20million each, and there would only be one construction site set-up cost.

The Fulham riverside was named by Thames Water last month as their new ‘preferred site’ for the tunnel – after originally naming a patch of open space in Barn Elms in Richmond. The change meant the council and local people had 14 weeks to mount a challenge.  At a public meeting earlier this month Thames Water faced accusations that the consultation form was deliberately over complicated and asked leading questions.

Current consultation process is "deeply flawed"

Cllr Nick Botterill, Hammersmith &Fulham Council Deputy leader, said:

“The Mayor of London’s intervention is very welcome as the current consultation process is deeply flawed. How can it be fair to give Fulham residents just 14 weeks to save our tight knit residential neighbourhood when other areas have been given more than 18 months?”

Thames Water has not said how much the expanded Kirtling Street option would save or whether it would add to the £4.1 billion cost of building the tunnel. Thames Water has said that the cost of acquiring, constructing and operating each site is treated as commercially confidential information.

Will AMP6 Business Plan consultations preclude provision of "commercially sensitive" information? 

The tunnel raises some interesting questions about the wider issue of Ofwat’s proposal for the water and wastewater companies to conduct extensive stakeholder engagement on their proposed Business Plans for the upcoming AMP6 investment programme for 2015 to 2020. Ofwat has yet to produce any formal guidance on how the utilities will be instructed to make commercially-sensitive information available to stakeholders to enable them to make informed comments on the Business Plans, or to say whether there will be any exemptions about the provision of sensitive information.