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We have a drain out the back of our house in the parking area which is constantly overflowing, which the council are unwilling to sort. I'm trying to find information that would indicate who is responsible for its maintenance. The drain deals with surface water from the whole terrace's guttering.
The actual overflowing drain is in a shared parking area behind the houses. This is the type where each house has their own private area to park, but each other house has to allow access over their part to the other properties. My understanding is that these type of parking areas are often adopted by the council. If this is the case my thinking is the drain is their problem to sort out. Is this correct, or is it more likely than the drain is the shared responsibility of the properties using it?
Is this a new build or relatively old?
Usually adopted but the developer needs to arrange this and it is not simple. Your solicitor should have picked it up and explained the situation to you when you bought the house. If it is not adopted then do you pay a service charge to a management company, if so its likely their problem?
Its more than likely going to be your local water board you need to contact. In our area (Severn Trent) they recently sent us a letter to say they were adopting all shared drainage to properties, even that on private land.
Give your water board a call and see what they say.
Do you pay a service charge? If so then whoever you pay it to would be a good starter for 10
Is it new build is relevant as adopting roads / drains now requires a developer to enter into legal agreements with councils / waterboards, which is expensive and a major hassle. Developers cut corners by just not doing it which is where your solicitor comes in.
Built later 70's so no not a new build. There is also no service charge that we pay. The council have referred us onto Southern Water before, and in both cases Southern Water said its not their drain and too talk to the council. However we have also had a similar letter to the-muffin-man about drain adoption from Southern Water.
I do remember asking the solicitor what the deal was with that bit of land as I want to make it part of the garden proper, however we only got a vague answer about that type of land normally being adopted.
Things are changing, it will become Southern Waters problem in the near future. As I understand it drains on private property serving a single property will be the homeowner's responsibilty, as soon as it hits a boundary or becomes shared with another property it will become the water companies problem.
Yeah found that info a few minutes ago. There are a few exceptions, one of which is where the drain flows straight into a water course. I'm not 100% sure however suspect this one does as we are only 20m from a stream (which I know has pipes flowing into it further up stream).
As already said, if the sewer is draining surface water from two properties or more to a public sewer, from 1st October it will become the responsibility of Southern Water. However, if it is discharging directly to an adjacent watercourse, then this might not (probably won't) happen. In which case, it is likely to be the joint responsibility of all properties who discharge to the sewer. It is /very/ rare that a private sewer would be adopted by the land owner (council or developer), just because it lies beyond your boundary. Which is why the Government has tried to force developers to get sewers adopted (by the water board) to stop any confusion.
Your solicitor should have done the relevant drainage searches during your purchase of the property, so should be able to tell you who owns / is responsible for that drain at present. If you wanted to get a copy of the maps of the public sewers, can you pay £48 to Southern Water [url= https://www.southernwater.co.uk/BusinessCustomers/propertySearches/mainsAndSewerMaps.asp ]here[/url], but this won't show you the private drains / sewers. The council might have copies of the planning proposals from when the houses were built, but they might not because of their age. In which case, the only certain way of ascertaining where the sewer flows from and to (and hence whos responsibility it is) is usually by CCTV survey or similar.
When you say "constantly overflowing" do you mean it surcharges when it rains heavily, it surcharges when the stream is in flood (high flow), both, or literally all the time (the latter would suggest that non-surface water is overflowing into the wrong drain)? And is this recent? If it only surcharges when it rains heavily and is a recent problem, it's likely to be a blockage or break in the pipes that a cctv survey would identify. Your house insurance /might/ cover survey work, particularly if you can show there is a potential risk of flooding to your property from the overflowing water (i.e. it would be a preventative measure). It's worth asking.
It is highly likely that this not adopted by anybody as it's in private land and (from the sounds of it) only discharges into a local watercourse. Nowadays a developer would seek approval form either the Environment agency or the local 'Internal drainage board' to discharge to a watercourse. As the houses were built in the 70's it's probably just been bunged in there as nobody really cared in those days (before my time as a drainage engineer or anythinig else for that matter i'm only 35!).
You could speak top the highways dept of the council to see if the area is adopted, if it is the drain will be the responsibility of the local authority, if the area is not adopted it will be you/other residents responsibilty.
Water authorities are adopting all private drainage probably next year, so until then they will do nothing. but even then as it's a surface water drain that discharges to a watercourse they may not adopt it.
If I were you i'd get your hands down it or hire some drain rods and clear it.
and what konagirl said. 🙂
or as ads678 said, hire some drain rods and try and clear it yourself 😀
Thanks, useful info there. By constantly I mean any time we get a decent amount of rain it overflows, then slowly goes down over the next few days.
Think my next course will be to try the highways agency as suggested, then if nothing from them will try it through insurance. Not going to try myself as from talking to one of our neighbours it has been inspected in the past and the problem was a root (before we bought the house though so not 100% on this).