Liability for damaged caused by neighbours leaking drainage

Our neighbours have had a leaking bathroom drain pipe for at least a few months now that seems to be causing damp in some of our exterior walls. When I 1st discovered this I let the remnants know and asked them to get the landlord to sort it out. Two months later and it doesn’t look like this has happened and the drain pipe is still dumping the bathroom waste water (not the toilet thankfully) onto the ground between our houses.

I’ve now contacted the landlord directly asking them to repair the leek and have asked if they would be willing to fund work to dig up a section of concrete path between our houses to allow our wall and the ground to dry out properly (before they reinstate a new path surface).

What I’m wondering about is if there is any legal guidance in who would be responsible for the work cost associated with the removal and relaying of the path to try and get the damp in our walls sorted as this is on our property but is obviously being damaged by their leak.

If they don’t go for my kind suggestion that they cover the cost of the repairs out of their own pocket do I have any other recourse for getting the costs covered by them? I’m somewhat reluctant to get our home insurance involved if it isn’t likely to cover this sort of damage or to help recover any costs from the neighbour or their insurance policy.

Tbh in my limited experience of damage caused by a neighbour having a water leak this is exactly what your insurance is for and will ensure it’s fixed properly rather than the other party trying to do it on the cheap and making a lash of it.

I’d be very wary of asking my own insurance company to look at it, especially if the neighbour is not playing ball.

Repairing your own property through insurance is one thing but, to stop it happening again you need to fix the source of the problem – the neighbours leak.

That opens up all sorts of potential challenges and arguments later on when something else fails that can be (loosely) attributed to the work that ‘you’ did on their property.

Personally I’d get proper legal advice and take lots of pictures before getting any insurance work carried out.

Letter before action to the landlord to stop the leak

Your walls will dry out naturally this summer

It is what your insurance is for even if that doesn’t feel quite “fair”. I’ve managed property on both sides of this. Do try to get the other owner to make a repair before making good your own property.

Letter before action to the landlord to stop the leak

You’ll need to show you’ve taken reasonable steps to communicate and that the other person has failed to act before going in all guns blazing. Two months is a long time but might need to show more evidence of your attempts to communicate.

We are in the opposite situation. We have a neighbour, downhill of us and all the other properties up the road and down the road and behind. Their property is built with two-thirds of the lower storey beneath our ground level. Our surface, roof and household drains have no leaks with water directed from all our property to our front boundary where all the drainage infrastructure lies.

Said neighbour blames their damp issue on us, and insists we have to rectify an issue where we cannot be the cause. We have proactively investigated drainage and ensured that any open area of our property drains away from theirs. Obviously, subterranean water from further up the hill could make its way under our boundaries and foundations to their property. They insist we replace our existing and well-maintained guttering. They are not prepared to tank their partially below ground lower-storey…

We have no issues with damp in or excess water below our property, but one massively helpful suggestion from them is that we tank our foundations at our sole cost.

OP – as stated. Show evidence of comms and their landlord should do the fix first. If not you’ve choice of whether to get your own legal advice or use your insurance (if you got legal assistance through them also).

@Jamj1974. What you have here is a disconnect between what you “know” and what they “know” – so my approach would be to talk to your neighbour and get a professional in to survey the issue between you – with access to both of your houses.

If you’re right the pro will say “not a problem caused by you” and that sorts your neighbour out – all the cost on him and problem goes away – and you haven’t had a massive fallout.

Unfortunately, next door will not pay for a survey – we have and they have confirmed it’s not a fault for us to resolve…

I can see that grey water being allowed to flow onto a concrete path is undesirable and a nuisance, but don’t understand why it’s creating a damp problem. The path should drain rainwater, unless it’s draining to a soakaway that can’t cope with the volume it should drain grey water. Or is it leaking from their pipe and running down your wall to get to the path?

Being as damp can cause so much damage even in the short term I’d have just got the new pipes and a ladder and sorted it myself. It probably wouldn’t take more than an hour or two and drain pipes are pretty cheap.

Or you can sit around sending annoyed emails and phone calls while your house gets damaged.

Our neighbour had a leaking shower that resulted in water coming through the party wall into our dining room bringing off the paint and causing mould to form. They repeatedly died that it was anything to do with them, so after much messing about I got environmental health involved.

They sorted it rather rapidly after that.

I would just fix it myself by getting the waste away, you could have fixed it by now. Keep receipts ask the owner for a contribution he can offset it against tax he sounds like a cheapskate.

They repeatedly died

No wonder environmental health got involved 😄

As suspected this sounds messy rather than a nice clean cut case in most instances. Joy.

I guess I’ll see if they can at least sort out the leaking waste pipe then see how much of a fight I can be arsed with when it comes to doing anything about the damp wall/path. I suspect if I just commit to a couple of weekends of hard work then it would probably come in at well under £1000 (hopefully closer to £500) for the tool/skip hire and materials to sort out the path.

Whats in this water that has caused thousands of pounds of damage to a path? The path will get wet everytime it rains. Sort the pipe, let the path and wall dry naturally.

Whats in this water that has caused thousands of pounds of damage to a path? The path will get wet everytime it rains. Sort the pipe, let the path and wall dry naturally.

The water is running down between a solid concrete path on our side and the solid finished yard on their side (unfortunately, completely bypassing the drain it runs right past on their side as I guess it wasn’t installed too well). Once under our path there isn’t an easy route out for the water so it isn’t drying out that quickly (or at all really now, what with the continued topping up it gets) and so our wall isn’t drying out either. I’d really like to be able to finished putting our rooms back together inside the house so would like it dry as soon as possible. Hence the desire to rip up the path to let the ground dry out now rather than later.

Unless it all magically sorts itself out within days of the leak being fixed.

Unless it all magically sorts itself out within days of the leak being fixed.

I would give it a couple of weeks of dry and warm weather, you should see it drying out by then

Unfortunately, next door will not pay for a survey – we have and they have confirmed it’s not a fault for us to resolve…

I would say “I refer you to the reply given in Arkell and Pressdram”

You have a survey, they don’t, it’s not going anywhere

The water is running down between a solid concrete path on our side and the solid finished yard on their side

Can you confirm a couple of things?
Is their waste pipe missing completely it is a bad joint/crack and it’s dripping?

So these are two buildings separated by the path on your side and the “yard” on their side – these are two separate sections of concrete poured at separate times?

How wide is your path?

Is your path above the indoor ground floor level {where the damp has appeared}?

How far is their house from yours {if they have a yard between their house and your path it must be a reasonably gap}?

Once under our path there isn’t an easy route out for the water so it isn’t drying out that quickly

If the path is at or below the internal floor level then it’s hard to see how water in the soil is creating damp up your wall.

If your path is above the internal floor level then it’s just bad design and I’d say the issue is yours.

The joint between your path and their yard will never be watertight if they were poured at separate times.

At the moment I’d say it would be difficult to pin the blame on them as any surface water would follow the same route i.e. down the crack between the path and the yard.
(IF this is the problem then you could try sealing the joint using liquid rubber for fixing roofs – I used it for the same job last September and it’s worked very well)