Working group to act on smell

Westerleigh Parish Council and South Gloucestershire Councillor Claire Young have set up a working group with Tulip (the owners of the abattoir), Wessex Water and the Environment Agency to tackle the foul smells that have been affecting Westerleigh village.

Claire after the initial meeting of the working
group, which was hosted by Tulip

The group had an initial meeting on Monday 28th February to pool data and agree the next steps. It has not been possible to identify the source or sources of the smells from the logging done so far, so more extensive, widespread monitoring will be carried out before the group meets again in April. It’s very important that you keep letting Claire and the Parish Council know about any incidents as well as reporting them to Tulip and Wessex Water. Please give as much information as you can, such as:

• Date and time
• Exact location where you can smell it
• Whether you can smell the odour inside your house or only outside
• Whether it seems to be coming from any particular point, for example, around a drain cover or whether you can simply smell it in the air around you
• A description of the smell – is it like rotten eggs, human sewage, rotting vegetation or something else?
• What the weather is like at the time and what it had been like before the smell occurred – is it raining heavily, has there been a long period of dry weather beforehand?

Don’t forget that if gases are coming back into your house via the drains, South Gloucestershire Council’s Environmental Health team can provide monitoring tubes to test for Hydrogen Sulphide (the gas that smells of rotten eggs).

Claire and the Parish Council will keep working with residents to get this problem resolved.