The visible light active photocatalysts WO3 (C1), Fe2O3 (C2), WO3/rGO (C3), Fe2O3/rGO (C4) were synthesized under in-situ hydrothermal method. The physico-chemical characteristics were studied and characterized by XRD, Raman, UV-vis-DRS, TEM, SEM, BET, EDX and XPS. The formation of WO3 and Fe2O3 was confirmed by XRD and the average crystallite size of the prepared samples was less than 50 nm. The Raman spectroscopy confirms the decreasing ID/IG ratio of WO3/rGO composite than the pure rGO. The band gap calculated by UV-vis diffuse reflectance spectroscopy was found to be lower for the composites C3 and C4 than C1 and C2. The TEM results confirmed that the WO3 nanoplates are uniformly distributed on rGO sheets and no significant lattice distortion was observed on growing WO3 nanoplates on rGO. The chemical composition and oxidation states of synthesized nanocomposites (C3 and C4) can be characterized by X-ray Photoelectron Spectroscopy. The surface area of photocatalyst C3 was found to be 16 m2/g. The visible light activity of prepared photocatalysts was tested for the degradation of p-cresol and the reduction of Cr (VI). Typical results highlighted that WO3/r-GO (C3) is the best active catalyst and the simultaneous degradation of the pollutants is beneficial over the removal of individual pollutants. The mineralization of the organic pollutant was confirmed by the TOC analyzer and the percentage of mineralization for the best active photocatalyst was ∼80%. © 2017 Elsevier B.V.