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Trade effluent
The discharge of non-domestic wastewater to the public sewer from commercial and industrial premises is known as trade effluent. If not controlled trade effluent discharges can have harmful effects including damage to sewers, sewage treatment processes and receiving watercourses. We issue trade effluent consents to the owner or occupier of trade premises authorising the discharge of trade effluent into the public sewer. It is the customer’s responsibility to obtain consent. Consents contain legally enforceable conditions that control the volume and quality of the trade effluent discharged to sewer. It may be necessary for you to provide and maintain some form of on-site treatment to ensure you can comply with the consent conditions, although this isn’t always required.
There are currently over 1,200 consented discharges which range from car washes and launderettes to large food and drink manufacturing sites. Wastewater discharges from certain commercial sites including restaurants, take-aways, hotels and caravan parks are not regarded as trade effluent.
If you have a trade effluent consent you will pay trade effluent charges based on the volume and strength of effluent discharged. We routinely inspect and sample higher risk trade effluent discharges to check compliance with consent conditions and for determining the effluent strength for charging purposes.
Breach of any consent condition is a criminal offence and may result in prosecution, although we will seek to work with customers to resolve compliance issues wherever possible.
Further details on our approach are given in the enforcement statement download listed to the right on this page.
More information on trade effluent is available on this website or by contacting one of our commercial waste water advisors.