Where do we stand with 'our' sewerage pipes?

Candy53

Hello,

We received the letter about taking the sewerage pipes over.

In the diagram with the letter it showed the pipes coming out of the front of the houses.

Ours go from the back, as all the houses do on both sides of the street.
Then they all go into a long pipe, that goes under everyone's back gardens, then it joins the pipes at the top of the street.

The pipes are very old and in a winter, somewhere further up, it gets blocked when it freezes, and as we are the end house, the waste gets pushed back down to us and blocks our drain up.
All the houses were built in 1932.
We are tenants of a housing group, and when the drain got blocked, we called them to clear it. But, as all the other houses are owned, not all of them would agree to pay towards our landlords putting a camera up to find the problem. Hence, it hasn't been done.

I wrote an email to our water board asking if they would be taking over the pipe, but the reply was: 'We will be taking over the pipes outside your property'??

Will they be responsible for the pipe? Or in our case, will things just stay the same?

Thanx
Candy.

macman

Since your property is pre-1937, the shared drains are and always have been the responsibility of the water utility-nothing has changed for you in this respect.
The individual householders on such a system are responsible for the drain until it meets the shared section (i.e. where it runs parallel to the back of the houses). If a blockage is causing all the properties upstream to block, then the blockage must be in the shared drain, not the householder's drain that joins it.
So the housing group are not responsible and never have been-you need to contact your water supplier, who will probably try and deny liability-you need to be persistent.

Candy53

Thanks for your reply.

Candy.