Thames Water workers have been tackling a fatberg the length of a Boeing 747 underneath a road in west London.

The ‘fatberg’ – a congealed mass of fat, wet wipes and other litter wrongly put down drains and toilets – formed under a 80 metre stretch of Shepherd’s Bush Road. A team of sewer experts worked all last week to break up and remove the immense, solid blockage from the sewer to prevent sewer flooding to nearby homes and business. Using high powered water jets, the team broke up the congealed mass so that wastewater could start to pass through the sewer again.

Tackling sewer blockages is an ongoing problem for Thames - last year it had to remove a 15-tonne fatberg from a sewer in Kingston. This latest fatberg is the 68^th blockage reported at Shepherd’s Bush in the last five years league, while Harrow has reported a staggering 13,417 blockages in the same period.

Dave Dennis, Thames Water sewer operations manager, said:

“We have 108,000km of sewers, and that’s a lot of pipe to keep clear. We spend £12 million a year tackling blockages, most of them formed because people have tipped cooking fats down the drain and wet wipes down the loo.

“The sewers serve an important purpose - they are not an abyss for household rubbish. Fat goes down the drain easily enough, but when it hits the cold sewers, it hardens into disgusting ‘fatbergs’ that block pipes”