Harrogate town centre to benefit from £1.8 million water mains replacement – but six months of road disruption lie ahead

Replacing the mains with durable, flexible plastic pipework will improve reliability of drinking water supply, reduce leakage and prevent water main bursts in the area.

The work is part of Yorkshire Water’s £406m investment to replace more than 1,000km of water mains across the region over the next five years.

Alex Spivey, Project Manager at Yorkshire Water, said: “This project will be a significant upgrade to Harrogate’s clean water infrastructure, and will help us to deliver the quality and reliability of service that our customers rightly expect – with bursts, loss of supply, and emergency roadworks much less likely.”

In the project area, there have been ten mains bursts over the last three years.

This scheme is one of 21 planned across North Yorkshire in the first year of Yorkshire Water’s mains investment project, totalling over 90km of pipework being replaced.

A further 26km will be replaced in the second year, across ten schemes.

Planning is underway for the last three years of the investment period.

Contract partners M Group will begin work in Harrogate on Tuesday, August 26 and are expecting to spend six months completing the project.

There will be two teams working simultaneously though Harrogate starting on Ripon Road before moving on to Swan Road, Crescent Road, Montpellier Mews, Montpellier Parade, Cambridge Street, The Prince of Whales Roundabout, and finally on to Back Granville Road.

Some of the work is on footpaths, and some will be on the road itself.

To keep everyone safe, roads may need to be closed or have temporary traffic lights up during work.

Alex added: “This is one of our more complex mains replacement schemes and we appreciate that the roadworks, which are in place to protect everyone, will cause traffic disruption.

"We have worked with the local authority highways department to carefully plan the work in a way that will reduce that level of disruption as much as possible – for example, we’ll be temporarily halting work over the Christmas period.”

Yorkshire Water and M Group colleagues will be hosting a community drop in on Thursday, July 31 at St Peters Church between 3pm and 6.30pm.

Residents and businesses are invited to come along to meet the project team, ask questions, and find out more about the work.

Alex added: “Thank you to all our customers in advance for their patience and understanding whilst we complete this important work.

"We’ll be working hard to deliver the improvements as quickly as possible so that Harrogate residents can start feeling the benefits.”