Sewage flooding advice and how we can help

Flooding from sewers can happen for several reasons and despite our best efforts, we can’t always stop it. During heavy rainstorms, when huge amounts of rainwater - called surface water - forces its way into the sewers is when sewer flooding is most likely.

We’ll do our best to be with you within four hours of you telling us about internal flooding and we’ll refund your sewerage bill, up to a maximum of £1000, each time it happens, without you even having to ask.

If we have not done all that we should, and as a result of our negligence you need to move out of your property, we’ll consider finding you somewhere else to stay while things are sorted out. And if the flooding turns out to be our fault, we’ll consider any extra expenses you may have had. You can make a claim for your expenses up to a year after the flooding so it’s always useful at the time if you can take photographs and keep things like receipts, to help with your claim.

If a sewer blockage or a problem at a pumping station looks like it could cause flooding to houses we will have one of our men on site as soon as we can to investigate.

After a flooding event

When the floodwaters have calmed down, we will do our best to find out why it happened and see if there is anything that can, within reason, be done to stop it happening again. We can’t stop storms but we try to see if there is a better way to manage the consequences and protect customers more.

We’ll take a good look at how much rainfall fell at the time and how our sewer was coping before, during and after the event. This sort of investigation isn’t quick and to do a thorough job can take weeks rather than days so we’ll try to let you know what’s going on.
.