Barhale Wins £16m Yorkshire Water Contract for Scarborough Service Reservoir
- Michael Ghobrial
- 23 hours ago
- 3 min read
Civil engineering and infrastructure specialist Barhale has been awarded a £16 million contract by Yorkshire Water to design and construct a new service reservoir at Springhill, near Scarborough. The four year scheme forms part of the utility's AMP8 investment programme and is intended to safeguard long term drinking water resilience for the town.
Project overview
Project name: Springhill Service Reservoir No.3, Scarborough
Client: Yorkshire Water
Appointed firm: Barhale
Contract value: £16 million
Contract duration: Four years, with main construction scheduled to begin in 2027
Scope of works: Construction of a 17.3 million litre twin compartment reinforced concrete service reservoir with an associated valve house, plus new inlet, outlet and overflow pipelines and pumping stations
Replacing ageing infrastructure
The new Scarborough service reservoir will replace the 93 year old Springhill Service Reservoir No.1, which holds 15 million litres, alongside the smaller 2.6 million litre Springhill SRE No.2, ensuring the town has sufficient storage capacity to meet both current and future demand. Assets of this age are a familiar challenge across the UK water sector: many service reservoirs still in daily use were built in the early twentieth century, and while they can often be kept operational with ongoing maintenance, replacement becomes the more cost effective option once structural condition, capacity constraints and modern resilience standards are all taken into account together.
The new structure will measure 55 metres by 77 metres externally and stand five metres tall, split internally into two equal 54 by 38 metre compartments that will be hydraulically balanced with the existing Springhill reservoirs during the transition period, allowing supply to Scarborough to continue uninterrupted while the new asset is brought into service and the old ones are decommissioned.
Construction approach
Barhale will use a hybrid construction method, casting the base slab in situ while fabricating precast walls, columns and roof elements off site, an approach intended to improve quality control and reduce programme risk on a constrained site adjacent to the existing reservoirs. The concrete mix itself has been specifically designed to resist soft water attack and chemical degradation without relying on protective coatings, an important detail for a structure expected to remain in service for many decades with minimal ongoing maintenance.
Beyond the reservoir structure itself, the contract scope includes new inlet, outlet and overflow pipelines and associated pumping stations, along with the eventual decommissioning and disconnection of the two existing Springhill reservoirs once the new asset is fully commissioned. Surveys are already under way ahead of main construction, which is scheduled to begin in 2027.
Part of a wider AMP8 investment cycle
The Springhill contract adds to a run of recent AMP8 awards for Barhale, which was appointed earlier this year to Yorkshire Water's wider Complex Non-Infrastructure Framework, and follows a similar £17 million trunk main contract the contractor secured with Thames Water. Yorkshire Water's AMP8 programme covers a broad range of water and wastewater infrastructure upgrades across the region, and contracts of this scale are likely to continue being let over the coming years as utilities work through investment plans agreed with Ofwat for the current regulatory period.
Related reading
For more on this story's wider context, see our earlier coverage: Peel Waters Starts Infrastructure Works at Yorkhill Quay
Take it further
Working on a UK utilities contract of this kind means understanding your payment rights. Our Getting Paid: Construction Payment Rights, Retentions and Adjudication Guide is available now on the Emilecon store.
