The campaign to save Barn Elms playing fields from seven years of misery has ended in victory.

Thames Water has published final proposals for a £4.1bn cross London The Thames Tideway Tunnel, dubbed "the super sewer" which avoid Barn Elms in favour of a brownfield industrial site in Carnwath Road, in Fulham.

A spokesman for Wandsworth Council said: "Wandsworth Council and its Save Barn Elms Alliance partners mounted a fierce campaign to protect these popular playing fields after they were identified as the preferred location for a giant tunnelling compound in the scheme's original plans."

The tunnel project is vital to cleaning up the River Thames, which is polluted by discharges of raw sewage from London’s over-burdened Victorian sewers.

In a typical year, 39m tonnes of untreated sewage flushes into the Thames - enough to fill the Royal Albert Hall 450 times.