Shared and party drain surveys in Great Sankey

Shared and party drain surveys — how it works here

Shared drainage is not only a terraced-street problem. The estates built across west Warrington from the 1970s onwards were laid out with runs serving several properties at once, crossing plot boundaries in ways the deeds rarely show, and forty years later nobody living there knows which house connects where. In October 2011 most runs serving more than one property in England and Wales transferred to the water company — here, United Utilities. The lateral serving your house alone did not. Where those two meet is the line that decides who pays for a repair, and on an estate it is almost never obvious on the ground. We survey the full run, identify every property connection, and mark that boundary explicitly on the report. It regularly moves a four-figure repair off a homeowner, and it settles arguments between neighbours before they harden.

• Every property connection on the shared run located and identified
• The 2011 private-to-public boundary marked explicitly
• Applies to modern estates, not only to Victorian terraces
• One survey can be used by every household on the run
• Establishes liability before the repair is agreed, not after