Who Owns Which Pipe

Three words

Drain, Lateral Drain, Sewer

They are not interchangeable and the difference decides who pays.

A drain carries waste from one building and the structures belonging to it. Within your boundary, it is yours to maintain.

A lateral drain is the length that runs from your boundary to the sewer, usually under the pavement or the road. It is the water and sewerage company's.

A sewer collects from more than one building. Also the company's — and note what that means: a pipe that serves your house and next door's is a sewer, even though it runs through your garden and looks exactly like a drain.

The line of responsibility falls at the property boundary. Inside it and serving you alone: yours. Beyond it, or serving more than one property: theirs.

Why it matters here

A Defect on Their Side Is Their Repair

Drain rats get into a private system through a defect — a cracked length, an open joint, a collapsed section, a branch capped at one end only. Fixing that defect is the permanent answer, and a blocker is what protects you in the meantime and afterwards.

So the question "whose pipe is that?" is worth answering before anyone quotes for excavation. If the defect is on the public side, the water company investigates and repairs it, and it is not billed to you. Reporting it costs nothing.

If it is on your side, it is yours. That is not a disaster — a patch repair or a lining is routine drainage work — but it is worth knowing which conversation you are having.

Two companies serve this patch, Anglian Water and Thames Water. Which one you have depends on your address rather than your county, so check your bill rather than assuming.

The shared run

The One People Get Wrong

This is the commonest misunderstanding, particularly on estates and in terraces.

If the pipe running down your garden also takes the waste from the houses behind or beside you, it is not your drain. It serves more than one building, which makes it a sewer, and most such pipes are now the water company's to maintain rather than the householders'.

People go on believing they are individually responsible for a shared pipe for years, and occasionally pay for work on it that they did not have to. If you are about to spend money on a run and you are not certain it serves only you, that is worth establishing first.

For a blocker, the practical consequence is simple: it goes in your own branch, between your building and the point where you join the shared pipe. That closes the route into your property without touching anybody else's.

What we can and cannot do

Where a Pest Controller Stops

We survey, we identify where rats are getting into the system, and we fit blockers on the part of the system you own. That is the whole of it and it is worth being straight about the edges.

We do not repair drains. A cracked or collapsed run is drainage work and it wants a drainage contractor.

We do not deal with your water company on your behalf, and we are not in a position to make them do anything. What we can give you is the evidence — a recording, the location, what the defect is — in a form you can put in front of them, which is usually what gets it looked at.

And we will say when a blocker is not the answer. If the defect is a metre outside your boundary in a pipe you do not own, the useful next step is a phone call to the water company, not an invoice from us.

Short answers

Drain Blocker Questions

Going further

Drain and Rat Guides