In 2011 the town's sewage works, which serves a population of ten thousand, was upgraded replacing the old bar screens which had reached the end of their working life with modern wire mesh drum screens which are able to screen out not only an increasingly large amount of undesirable waste they also filter grit and fat thus decreasing the load on the plant they were such designed to meet the plants stringent outfall requirements as set out by the environment agency. The settling and humus tanks were also upgraded from old manual sludging under hydrostatic head to circular tanks fitted with scrapers to automatically desludge the tanks.