Good afternoon,

We’re continuing with our preparation work along the pipeline route and, to do this, we’re arranging two short-term road closures that lead north from the A67 to the west of Winston.

The first closure will be at the Tarn Lane Junction – Tarn Lane East from Monday 16^th October 2023 to Monday 23^rd October 2023

The second closure will be at the Whorlton crossroads – Tarn Lane West from Monday 23^rd October to Monday 30^th October 2023

Our working hours will be Monday to Friday, from 7.30am to 6.00pm.  If we need to work into the weekend, we’ll be working on Saturdays from 8am to 2pm.

Please be assured that we’re doing all we can to minimise any disruption for you and your community throughout the work. We’ll be placing roadside signage at the road closure points two weeks ahead of these closure dates, to clearly signpost the diversion routes for drivers.

With all construction projects, unexpected delays can sometimes occur.  We’ll be timing these road closures to ensure they don’t overlap, minimising the length of the short but necessary signed diversions.  The closures will not impact traffic on the A67 itself.  

We’ll be working as quickly and as safely as possible and thank people for their patience while this essential work is happening. 

If you’d like to speak to a member of our project team, you can telephone our customer contact centre on 0345 717 1100 or tweet us on @nwater_care and we will be very happy to help you.

Kind regards

Karen Alexander

Farrans’ Community Business Partner

Good afternoon,

Farrans has taken delivery of some new machinery from its Plant Department for Project Pipeline. The machines are all brand new Hitachi excavators – two 350s (38t), one 225 (22t) and one 135 (13t) – and they will be in operation as our main pipelaying machines over the next year.

One of the 350s will be the primary digging machine for the pipe trench. The second 350 and the 225 will be used for stripping material and backfilling, whilst the 135 will be used for more intricate work such as on road crossings and where we have to work around existing utility infrastructure.

Kind regards

Karen Alexander

Farrans’ Community Business Partner

Good afternoon,

We’re setting up temporary traffic lights on Wednesday 13 September on the A6072, West Auckland Road, Shildon. To see a map of the exact location, please refer to our bulletin on the Traffic Update tab on this webpage.

This is so we can carry out preparatory work on this section of the road, ahead of the installation of the new pipeline which will eventually cross the road at this point.  We’re installing two-way traffic lights to keep road users, as well as our construction team safe, and we expect to be finished in approximately one week.

We’ll be working as quickly and as safely as possible and thank people for their patience while this essential work is happening. 

If you’d like to speak to a member of our project team, you can telephone our customer contact centre on 0345 717 1100 or tweet us on @nwater_care and we will be very happy to help you.

Kind regards

Karen Alexander

Farrans’ Community Business Partner

Good afternoon,

Over the summer, our team has been hard at work sinking two shafts on either side of the River Tees near the villages of Cotherstone and Lartington. Once completed, we'll be using a tunnel boring machine to drill beneath the river and link up the two tunnels, our solution to carry the new water pipes across the Tees.

When finished, the west shaft will be 8m in diameter and 32 metres deep.  The east shaft will be 7.5 metres in diameter and 46 metres deep. The difference in the depths is because the land on the east bank of the river at the crossing point is much steeper than the west bank. 

The image below is the view looking down into the east shaft.

We started this work at the end of May 2023, and currently we’ve excavated the east shaft to a depth of 18 metres, whilst the west shaft is down to 21 metres.  

We’ll be building a 221 tonne concrete base at the bottom of each shaft – a volume the equivalent of 15 wagons of concrete. Once complete, we expect to have excavated a total of 9838 tonnes of rock, a great deal of which will be used to back-fill the voids in the shafts once the new pipes have been put into position. 

The image below shows the west shaft.

These are high risk operations and we’re taking extreme care of our workforce at every stage of the process.

Kind regards

Karen Alexander

Farrans’ Community Business Partner

Good morning,

We’re setting up temporary traffic lights on Monday 4 September on the C30 at Hilton. This small road runs from the B6279 west end junction to the A688 Woodlea Junction. This is so we can carry out preparatory work on this section of the road, ahead of the installation of the new pipeline which will eventually cross the road at this point.  If you look at the Traffic Updates section of this website, you will see a map showing the exact location of this work.

We’re installing two-way traffic lights to keep road users, as well as our construction team safe, and we expect to be finished in one week. We’ll be working as quickly and as safely as possible and thank people for their patience while this essential work is happening. 

If you’d like to speak to a member of our project team, you can telephone our customer contact centre on 0345 717 1100 or tweet us on @nwater_care and we will be very happy to help you.

Kind regards

Karen Alexander

Farrans’ Community Business Partner

Good morning,

We’re setting up temporary traffic lights on the A68 at Houghton le Side, Heighington, between Wednesday 30 August and Tuesday 12 September 2023.  This is so we can carry out preparatory work on this section of the road, ahead of the installation of the new pipeline which will eventually cross the road at this point. A map showing the exact location of the traffic lights can be found in the Traffic Information tab of this webpage.

We’ll be installing two-way traffic lights to keep road users, as well as our construction team safe, and we expect to be finished in one week.

We’ll be working as quickly and as safely as possible and thank people for their patience while this essential work is happening. 

If you’d like to speak to a member of our project team, you can telephone our customer contact centre on 0345 717 1100 or tweet us on @nwater_care and we will be very happy to help you.

Kind regards

Karen Alexander

Farrans’ Community Business Partner

Good morning,

I trust you all had an enjoyable August Bank Holiday weekend. On Saturday, members from County Durham and Darlington’s Fire and Rescue Service had the opportunity to visit our Project Pipeline site.

Project Manager, Steve Coates, showed the team members around our site, including the shafts we are constructing either site of the river Tees, to take the pipe 12m under the river bed. The visitors discussed emergency response plans, which are crucial to have in place on construction sites such as this – safety is always our top priority.

The team were very interested in our shaft and tunnel construction and asked lots of questions. We’ve shared our Emergency Response Plan with them, as well as annotated drawings of the project’s access points. These will be uploaded to their digital communication system, so that all responders will have this vital information immediately available.

Kind regards

Karen Alexander

Farrans’ Community Business Partner

Good morning,

We’ll be installing temporary traffic lights on the A67 near Alwent Beck, on Monday 21 July 2023.  This is so we can carry out preparatory work on this section of the road, ahead of the installation of the new pipeline which will eventually cross the road at this point. If you look at our Traffic Update tab for this project, you will see a map with the precise location.

We’ll be installing three-way traffic lights to keep road users, as well as our construction team safe, and we expect to be finished in one week.

We’ll be working as quickly and as safely as possible and thank people for their patience while this essential work is happening. 

If you’d like to speak to a member of our project team, you can telephone our customer contact centre on 0345 717 1100 or tweet us on @nwater_care and we will be very happy to help you.

Kind regards

Karen Alexander

Farrans’ Community Business Partner

Good afternoon,

Yesterday marked an exciting milestone in our £155m Project Pipeline: County Durham and Tees Valley water mains renewal project.

The Farrans Construction team on site took delivery of the first of the new pipes as they arrived in Teesdale, ready for the beginning of construction of the new pipeline that will connect Lartington Water Treatment Works with Gainford.

This is part of the first phase of the project, which will eventually connect across to Whorley Hill and Shildon. Phase two will extend the new pipeline across to connect with our Teesside network.

The investment will eventually ensure around 200,000 of our customers in the south of the region continue to receive clean, clear and great tasting tap water every day.

The pipes are being brought in over the coming weeks, on a route designed to utilise major, rather than smaller roads, to avoid causing traffic issues on minor routes.

Kind regards

Karen Alexander

Farrans’ Community Business Partner

Good afternoon,

We’ll be installing temporary traffic lights on the B6278 near to Barnard Castle Golf Club between the dates of Friday 3 and Friday 11 August 2023.  This is so we can carry out preparatory work on this section of the road, ahead of the installation of the new pipeline which will eventually cross the road at this point.

We’ll be installing two-way traffic lights to keep road users, as well as our construction team safe. This work is weather-dependent, as we’ll be pouring concrete, therefore we cannot give an exact start date right now due to the heavy rain forecasted. However, the work will take us 4 days and we expect it to be finished by Friday 11 August 2023.

We’ll be working as quickly and as safely as possible and thank people for their patience while this essential work is happening. 

If you’d like to speak to a member of our project team, you can telephone our customer contact centre on 0345 717 1100 or tweet us on @nwater_care and we will be very happy to help you.

Kind regards

Karen Alexander

Farrans’ Community Business Partner