HR Wallingford site to host national leakage test hub

HR Wallingford’s Oxfordshire business park, and fields in the surrounding area, are to host the first National Leakage Research and Test Centre (NLRTC) – a large, secure environment that replicates a real underground water network, for water companies, innovators and others to test out novel solutions to reduce leakage. The centre will also certify technologies for application in the water industry.

The NLRTC will consist of an offline District Metered Area (DMA) – a fully scaled, 5km-long, buried water pipeline, with multiple sub-metered areas, leakage simulation bunkers, and a control room enabling automated control capabilities; and a smaller test rig, to enable new technologies to be tried out before they are tested at scale in the offline DMA.

The centre will be operated by a partnership between HR Wallingford and Northumbrian Water with support from WRc, and financed for the first three years by the Ofwat Innovation Fund. 

The partners are aiming to submit a full planning application shortly and anticipate that the nine-month construction phase will start later this year.