The council is not responsible for the maintenance,
repair and unblocking of most sewers and drains in the district but
we do have a role in overseeing that they work as intended.
Those organisations and people who are directly responsible for
ensuring that drains work properly are either Severn Trent Water
Ltd (a public company) or the owner/occupier of the property served
by the drain or
sewer. | |
The Public Health Act 1936 defines:
- a drain as the pipes built for the
drainage of a single or set of buildings within the same curtilage
(same ownership), and
- a public sewer (or combined drains) as being
the drainage serving more than one curtilage which was in use
before the commencement date of the Act (October 1937).
Public sewers include the above definition and all the sewers
subsequently adopted by the sewerage undertaker (currently Severn
Trent Water Ltd). By inference all other sewers are known as
private sewers and remain the responsibility of the owner/occupier
to maintain.
Blockages will normally be the responsibility of the occupiers
whilst repairs will be the responsibility of the owner. The
responsibility for the maintenance and clearing of public sewers is
the responsibility of the sewerage undertaker.
In houses built after 1937, if you and your neighbours share a
pipe, it becomes a private sewer owned by all the property owners.
These landowners must share equally in the cost of the upkeep of
their private sewers. However when a fault does develop it is only
those owners upstream of a fault, who are required to pay for the
repair. Hence it is important to establish where a blockage is
located so that costs can be apportioned fairly. It may be that the
fault lies under the garden of a householder whose drainage is not
effected by the fault. They will not be required to pay for any
repair as they will not benefit from any work done.
Your private sewer or drain will eventually join another pipe
probably located in the road outside your house. You must remember
that the responsibility for the pipe remains with you even when it
is under someone else's land or under the road until it has joined
the public sewer.
So how can the Council help you with a drainage
problem?
We will:
- Carry out an investigation to establish the facts of a
blockage.
- Serve legal notice on those people we hold responsible for
clearing the blockage to undertake works in a specified time.
- If the work is not done, arrange to have the work carried out
in default.
- Ensure that the work is properly done.
- Where works are completed in default, recover all the costs,
with the addition of an administration charge, from all those on
whom notice has been reserved.
The Council do not operate an out of hours service so contact
will need to be made between 9am and 5pm Monday to
Friday. Calls and emails received at other times will get
a response on the next working day. However we do treat blocked
drains and sewers as a high priority because of the public health
implications.
If your problem requires simple unblocking of a sewer please be
advised that involvement of the council will cause delay as we must
go through a legal process of investigation, service of notice.
There is then a delay of at least 48 hours to allow for the work to
be done by the owner/occupiers. Only then do we instruct the
council's contractor to do the work. Also, because a legal notice
has been served then details are recorded on the council's property
data base and may be passed to anybody buying the property when a
property search is done.
For further advice and help you can
contact Environmental
Health. | |
 |
| Please note - Some documents published before
1st December 2006 may contain incorrect contact
numbers. |
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