Pipework responsibility

Important - safe earthing of your property

If you suspect your property may be earthed using the water supply pipe, it’s important you contact your electricity company or a qualified electrician for advice.

For homes built before 1966, it used to be common practice for the incoming customer supply pipe to be used for electrical earthing.

The new pipes we install are plastic which don’t provide an electrical earth.

We’ll write to you if we’re carrying out work in your area to renew water supply pipes.

Sewerage

You are responsible for the length of the drain that takes sewage within and away from your property up to the boundary or to the point where it joins with pipework from another property.

You are also responsible for:  

• pipes connected to private treatment systems such as septic tanks, soakaways and private treatment works  
• other systems which do not connect to the public sewer such as surface water pipes which discharge directly to a watercourse
• internal drainage pipes or above ground pipework such as guttering or vent stacks.

Private sewage pumping stations that serve more than one property and pump to the public sewerage system transferred to us on 1 October 2016. Those transferring had to meet the following criteria:

• they already pump to the existing public sewer system owned by us
• they serve more than one property
• they are not part of a single, centrally managed site such as an industrial estate or hospital.

We will be responsible for all maintenance, breakdowns and electricity for the transferred pumping stations.

If your pumping station has transferred to us, you will have received instructions on how to transfer the electricity account to us. If you haven’t, please contact our pumping station transfer team on 0345 600 4 600. If your pumping station is on a shared electricity supply, we have agreed the amount of reimbursement with you.

If you have had a maintenance contractor looking after your pumping station, you need to tell them that we will be taking over the pumping station and they are no longer needed.

If you part own or are partly responsible for a private sewage pumping station and have not advised us of its existence yet, please call us on 0345 600 4 600 or let us know via our form with a grid reference and/or address, a description including how old it is and who currently maintains it.

If you become aware of a fault at a pumping station transferred to us, please call us on 0345 600 4 600. Please quote the site name and number as it appears on the pumping station control cabinet.