Living near Burton on Trent - beer types / water treatment

[mr_jolly]

I'm about to embark on my first AG brew but have been reading a lot about the type of water being a factor determining what can be brewed. I live just outside Burton on Trent and fall into South Staffs Water's "Burton" water supply area. As per usual their website is lacking in detail but I've read on other sites that Burton breweries brew pale ales as dark bitters can't be brewed using the local water.

Link to their water report: http://www.south-staffs-water.co.uk/dow ... ry_BUR.pdf
Link to their hardness table: http://www.south-staffs-water.co.uk/bus ... rdness.asp
(note that my area for the hardness table is "BUR")

I have two questions - 1. Does this mean I'm limited to pale ales unless I use bottled water? and 2. If I use tap water do I need to treat the water before using it (my plan was to just use a camden tablet to remove the chlorine and see what I get - but I do want to make sure I'm brewing a suitable type of beer for my water rather than trying to achieve the impossible).

Many thanks for your thoughts...

[mr_jolly]

Thanks - I was starting to wonder if my options were going to be limited. I'm planning on using tap water to begin with to see what the results are like before taking the "drastic" step (!) of buying bottled (albeit cheap bottled water).

With regard to the bicarbonates would boiling the water for an hour be enough to reduce them sufficiently to hit the right mash ph or is there a chemical method I'd need to use? I prefer the idea of just boiling it for an hour since this would, at least, leave me with plenty of hot water for the mash and then sparging.