Daily lorry trips at Ellesmere Port sewage works would rise from 22 to 72 under United Utilities' £140m digester plan. Four 29.4m tanks, all in Green Belt.
Lorry traffic in and out of Ellesmere Port sewage works would more than triple if United Utilities gets the permission it is asking for. The company’s own transport assessment puts the current figure at 22 one-way HGV movements a day. Under the scheme it would be 72.
The application is reference 26/02550/FUL, lodged with Cheshire West and Chester Council on 12 August and validated on 20 August. It seeks permission for an Advanced Anaerobic Digestion plant, plus a widened access onto the A5117.
United Utilities announced the scheme on 20 August and put its value at £140m. The £140m figure appears in the press release, not in the planning documents.
Where it actually is
The works is known operationally as Ellesmere Port Wastewater Treatment Works, but it is not in the town. The registered address is Ring Road, Little Stanney, CH2 4HZ, south of the A5117 and east of the M53, with the Stanlow refinery to the north. The council’s own file puts the parish as Stoak and the ward as Gowy Rural. The applicant’s planning statement says the site straddles the Little Stanney and Stoak parish boundaries.
What would be built
The council file lists the structures that need planning permission. Smaller items are being installed as permitted development under the water undertakers’ rules. The schedule in the planning statement includes:
- four digesters, 29.4m high and 19.5m in diameter
- two gas holders, 23.2m high and 23.8m in diameter
- a steam boiler building with an 18m stack
- a biomethane upgrading plant with a 19m absorption column and a 17.2m desorption column
- a biosolids export silo and two THP feed silos, each 15.4m high
- three motor control centre buildings, the tallest 9.1m
The cladding colour proposed for the new buildings is Moss Green, RAL 6005.
The Green Belt problem
The site sits inside the North Cheshire Green Belt. That is the part of this application that will decide it.
United Utilities argues the plant is “infill development on previously developed land” and therefore appropriate development under paragraph 154(g) of the National Planning Policy Framework. Its planning statement concedes the point is not clear cut:
“The Proposed Development, by virtue its height and massing would result in some harm to the spatial and visual openness of the Green Belt.”
The council has already pushed back once. At the pre-application stage, reference 25/02007/PREAPP, officers told the company that the scale of the structures could affect openness and that very special circumstances would have to be demonstrated. The planning statement records something else from that response: the council “did not accept, based on the information provided at the pre-application stage, that the Site constituted ‘Grey Belt’.” Grey belt is the lower-protection category in national Green Belt policy, and losing that argument is why the very special circumstances case is in the application at all.
The rulebook changed five days after it was lodged
There is a wrinkle nobody has flagged. The planning statement is dated 24 July 2026 and the application was received on 12 August. On 17 August the government published a rewritten National Planning Policy Framework, which states that its policies “will apply from 17 August 2026” and are material considerations in decision-making from the day of publication.
Numbered paragraphs are gone. Green Belt control now sits in policies GB6 and GB7. The letter the application leans on has moved:
- GB7(e) is now the previously developed land route, redevelopment “which would not cause substantial harm to the openness of the Green Belt”. That is the argument United Utilities is actually making.
- GB7(g) is now the grey belt route, the one the council has already said does not apply here.
- GB7(f)(i) is new ground worth watching. It lists “water and telecommunications infrastructure required in a Green Belt location” as not inappropriate, provided the impact on openness is minimised and there is no significant conflict with Green Belt purposes.
- GB6, paragraph 3 helps the fallback case: for renewable and low carbon energy proposals, very special circumstances “may include the wider environmental benefits associated with increased production of energy from renewable sources”.
The officer report will have to work from the new framework. The applicant’s statement was written against the old one.
Traffic
The 22-to-72 figure is for the finished plant, not the building work. It is driven by imported sludge: the works already takes sludge in from other treatment sites across Cheshire, and the new plant is designed to take more.
Construction traffic is separate and heavier in people than lorries. The transport assessment forecasts:
| Phase | Dates | Workers on site per day | One-way HGVs per day |
|---|---|---|---|
| Early mobilisation | Jul to Oct 2026 | 30 to 50 | 10 |
| Ramp-up | Oct to Dec 2026 | 50 to 75 | 15 |
| Pre-peak | Dec 2026 to May 2027 | 75 to 125 | 15 |
| Peak | May 2027 to Jun 2028 | 125 to 150 | 15 |
| Post-peak | Jun 2028 to Mar 2029 | 75 to 100 | 5 |
| Demobilisation | Mar to Oct 2029 | 50 to 75 | 3 |
Peak construction also brings up to 20 abnormal indivisible load movements a month. Construction hours would be 08:00 to 18:00, Monday to Friday, with no working at weekends or on bank holidays. A one-way system is proposed on site: lorries arriving from M53 junction 10 would use the main works entrance and leave by a temporary construction access, and lorries from M56 junction 14 would do the reverse.
Jobs, and what comes out of it
The works currently employs about 130 operational staff. The new plant would add 12, working day and night shifts.
Thermal hydrolysis, the step that makes this “advanced” digestion, heats and pressurises the sludge before digestion. It produces more biogas and a cleaner solid residue. The planning statement says the current plant’s biosolids cannot be used on arable crops, while the new plant’s output would meet the Biosolids Assurance Scheme standard and could be. The biogas would be upgraded to biomethane and injected into the gas grid; United Utilities says it is in discussions with Cadent about a direct connection.
On smell, the application says two new boilers and one new odour control unit would replace the existing odour control units, two combined heat and power engines and three boilers, and that dispersion modelling shows a negligible change over current operations.
The company has told the Environment Agency the new plant will be operational by March 2029, as part of its compliance plan under the Industrial Emissions Directive.
Nobody has commented yet
As of today the council’s file records 11 consultees, all consulted on 20 August, and none has responded. They include the Health and Safety Executive, the Lead Local Flood Authority, highways, the biodiversity team, the environmental protection team, parish council e-consultation and Welsh Water Dwr Cymru.
The neighbour consultation tab records “Total Consulted: 0”. No neighbour letters were sent, which leaves the site notice and the press advert as the formal routes in for the public.
What it means for you
- If you want a say, the clock is short. The council’s dates tab gives the latest site notice expiry as Saturday 12 September and the latest advertisement expiry as Friday 18 September 2026. Comments go through the application page.
- If you drive the A5117, the change you will notice first is construction traffic from mid-2027, not the finished plant. Up to 150 workers a day arriving before 08:00 and leaving after 18:00 is the bigger number here.
- If you live in Stoak, Little Stanney or Great Sutton, the visible change is height. Four 29.4m tanks and two 23.2m gas holders are taller than what is on the site now.
- If you are following the Green Belt argument locally, this is a live test of it on a major infrastructure site, and the council has already refused the grey belt label once.
The case officer is Emily Yates. The application is awaiting decision.
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