Severn Trent has told residents that Green Belt land will need to be developed to fund a long-awaited access road – with up to 1,000 jobs being created on the new industrial estates. The water company currently sends HGVs travelling to and from its Strongford sewage treatment plant along Barlaston Old Road in Trentham.

Residents in the area want Severn Trent to build an access road onto the A34 Stone Road, so the tankers do not need to drive past their homes. But the company says two Green Belt sites it owns will have to be sold and turned into industrial estates in order to generate the funding for the road.

Severn Trent is proposing that the land is earmarked for employment use in Stoke-on-Trent City Council's new local plan. One parcel of Severn Trent's land, next to the sewage works, is part of the wider BL2 site off the A34. The company also wants to sell off land next to Newstead Industrial Estate, designated E14 in the draft local plan.

The BL2 site also includes land owned by Trentham Golf Club, which it is looking to sell off for housing. BL2 has been earmarked for up to 500 homes in the draft plan, in addition to 25,000 square metres of employment land.

Robert Eaton, senior strategic planning manager at Severn Trent, explained the company's plans at a meeting of Trentham South Residents' Association.

He said: "I'm well aware of the issues over access at Strongford. It's been something we've been talking about with local councillors as long as I've been in this role. But if we are going to build that access we have to somehow fund it.

"After looking at this for a period of time, we've now found a way to do that, which will be to sell two pieces of land and allocate them for employment.

"If the local plan is adopted in late 2027, there will be planning applications for the land, and the access road could be build in 2031. So it's not going to happen overnight, but that's just the way the planning system works.

"The only reason we're doing this is to build the access road. People have told us that they want the access road, and that's what we are trying to do."

Mr Eaton told the meeting that between 500 and 1,000 people could eventually be employed on the two sites, once they are developed into industrial estates. He said that building the access onto the A34 would be a planning condition attached to the land next to the sewage works, and in any case would need to be built for the employment site.

Mr Eaton was also keen to stress that the development of Severn Trent's land is entirely separate to the golf club's proposals to sell off its land for housing, and neither scheme will be dependent on the other.

But some of the residents who attended the meeting expressed scepticism over Severn Trent's claim that developing Green Belt land is the only way to fund the road.

Trentham resident Ann Harley said: "We've all seen our water bills keep going up. Severn Trent are making millions of pounds of profit, but they have us over a barrel saying that the only way they can build the road is by selling off this land.

"Our roads are already too busy. If Trentham Gardens has something special on, then the A34 will be at a stand still."

Ward councillor Dan Jellyman said: "Severn Trent are spending millions of pounds turning Strongford into the UK's first net zero sewage plant, and yet they claim they haven't got enough money to build this access road."

But Mr Eaton insisted that due to water industry regulation, Severn Trent is restricted in how it spends its income, meaning other sources of funding are required for schemes such as the access road.