[Closed] Surface water drainage, whose responsibility?

Environment Agency - No - they only deal with river flooding not surface water.
Council - very much doubt it due to budget restraints unless it’s on their property.
Water company - this is basically my job, I deal with fixing issues with drainage from houses for a water utility company. If it’s shared drainage it may be the water company but not if already goes to soak away as it’s not connected to their systems.
Happy to have a chat with you about it, let me know your phone number via a DM.

As you say, local bylaws may affect things too and also the unadopted street may do too but probably less so.

No.

Hope that helps.

Seriously though, no. If it's just surface water from an unadopted road then it's your problem. But depending on where your solution drains to the local drainage board or EA might be interested in permissioning it.

Edit: ^^what he said

If it is a private unadopted lane, then the owner(s) of the lane are the ones to deal with it, much as they are responsible for keeping it in a usable state etc.

As has been said - who owns it? Is there any scope for some channels to helps move the surface water flow off the main slope sooner? Therefore lessen the amount of water collecting? (need to consider where that water gets moved to though as suspect surrounding land owners may not be too happy if they suddenly get numerous pools of water appearing).

Without trying to sound selfish - is there anyway you can redirect the flow of water away from your property? Would need to be done in such a way that it wasn't permanent I'd guess...would you have anyway of collecting this water and then maybe using it for watering your garden? If your garage is at the bottom of a slope, is there a way for you to channel this flow and get it in to some water butts so the water can settle and the sediment/dirt is at the bottom and you then have access to slightly cleaner water for around the property type use (or maybe even make a water feature and use that water?)?

No idea who you would approach to have this fixed properly and also suspect as it is private unadopted road then the 10 residents are going to have to cough up a reasonable amount towards the cost.

All the above not based on any actual known facts or how this actually works, just my own thoughts.

If it's just surface water following the slope then it's just about channeling it to a suitable outfall

The outfall may need a grit trap

Is there anywhere to logically send the water?

if its a private road its the responsibility of the landowner. depending on your deeds of sale this may be shared between all properties that use the lane, this may be a seperate landowner and a management company takes an annual payment for repairs and maintenance. so one for the solicitor initially. how are repairs to teh road funded at present? this may give you a steer.

a civil/drainage engineer can assist with design solutions - soakaways in the ashdown forest may not be an appropriate solution due the geology - subject to location of course its fairly variable up there!

I'd think you'd be wanting to look into constructing a swale or similar SUDS to deal with your issues as they're not going to go away.

I'm pretty sure the councils have a remit to adopt surface drainage if serving more than one property. But that may be for new developments only.

Where does it discharge to during normal conditions? You may be allowed to discharge more but its more likely you would gave to store it temporarily and release it at the current rate and would likely need to be treated. You would typical achieve this through suds measures as above.

Swales, rills, rain Gardens tree pits depending on ground conditions you may be able discharge to ground water (soakaway) or provide temporary storage (ponds, basins or aquacell type arrangements.) they also tend to be close to the surface/shallow how would your neighbours feel about digging.

Suds solutions can be pretty nice additions to the surroundings and keep more water on the site which is nice for the plants etc.

To actually answer your question... Your water company would be responsible for accepting the surface water to a surface water or combined sewer (or responsible for saying no!). The environmental agency would be responsible for any permitting required (release to watercourse/ground water). And the council would be responsible for upkeep of systems if adopted (road adoption and suds adoption are different things they wouldn't be building it I don't think.

I'm can't guarantee that information is correct because England's arrangements are rediculously backwards compared to the rest of the UK. But I work for a company that could certainly help.

Ping me if you want.

Ah a timely thread…
Mind if I chip in with a question for people who know about these things?

Some new houses have been built on a hill above our house. Steep hillside loads of concrete gone in.
Since then, my neighbour’s garden on one side is under water, and my (85 year old widow) neighbour on the other side has water coming up through her garage floor, and sizeable cracks in her house have appeared. Council have been round. It appears that a SUDS has been built as part of the new development, but no water has ever flown through it… like it’s not connected?
They haven’t finished the new houses yet. My elderly neighbour has her insurance company looking at her subsidence. It’s been confirmed that it’s ground water not a cracked pipe etc…
We’ve got a pond in the garden that we didn’t used to and lots of kitchen floor tiles have cracked, so I think we’ve had some movement…
What would stw do next? Local councillor? Or use insurance legal cover to pursue the builder?
We have some land drain pipes to put in to try to take some of the water away but feel like we need to be able to fix the cause not just move the water to another neighbour down the hill…

Surely based on that, the Council has then gone to the developers of the new houses and are having words with the intention that the developers put right - no?

@DickBarton
Not yet. It’s not been proven that our problems are definitely caused by the new build. Just spoke to the neighbour who has been told by the “two young men” that inspected her cracks that it’s due to a blocked drain on her property, so she is getting that looked at. I suspect it isn’t and we are just all being given the runaround by each organisation as they don’t want to have to sort it out.
A case of eliminating all the other issues until only one is left. But if it looks like a duck and quacks like a duck…

Nvironmental law is pretty clear on the topic.

Changes to a catchment should not negatively affect flooding downstream of the site.

It would be the first time Suds has been badly designed or not properly "connected".

With proper suds there isn't a connection as such as its all works as one. What suds can you see?

I took some photos of what I presume is the drainage for water off the new build:
A big pipe with nothing coming out of it
It leads to a shallow ditch which I would assume would disperse the water into the woods/meadow

No sign of anything having come through it really?

Thanks for everyone's input, what has been mentioned is really helpful. The lane doesn't really have anyone doing repairs to it, it's just a bumpy track with very little traffic! The existing drainage will have to be investigated i suspect going forward, their are no drains like you see on a normal road, at the top of my drive and bottom in front of the garage their are drainage channels that i keep clear annually and most of the time they are sufficient, it's just the super heavy downpours that over whelm them, but i have no idea where they drain out to.

Our neighbours that are getting the worst of it have lived on the lane for 40 years, never had a problem until about 2 years ago and it's happened 3 times since then. The inevitable consequences of climate change?

@joshvegas @b230ftw thank you for the offers, i'm going to have a chat with the neighbours but may drop you a line, i appreciate the offer.

Screw loose there.

Okay that's an outfall which could be an overflow for other suds systems. Are there ponds or anything?

Its pretty hard to see how they haven't caused it if all this stuff has occurred since they started. But equally what happened to the water that landed on the site before?

Is the water coming up through the ground or flowing across?

I'd kick off with the council and the EA.

You are absolutely right that diverting it round you and dropping it on the next poor sod is a dick move (this why dredging is bad)

OP, are you describing overland flow, rain that runs down your unadopted street from higher up? Rather than the surface water drains from your houses / roofs either discharging onto the ground rather than a sewer or the sewer being overtopped? The Land Drainage Act has particulars about how surface water should be drained from your roof and paved areas into underground drainage; how natural overland flow can be left unimpeded from higher to lower ground, but you shouldn't divert the flow onto neighbours' property for example; if there are drainage channels on the unadopted road then that channelling means you need to collectively work out how to legally drain that on to the next property below you (or adopted highway). So the Council's departments in land drainage and highways might be helpful. Whilst rainfall intensity might be increasing with cc, it is also entirely plausible that a change has been made upstream / upslope that is now discharging more water to the top of the lane in the first place, so that needs investigating.

@docrobster I would start investigating if you have legal cover, it is plausible that the building works or the SUDS has changed the groundwater level given the amounts of rain we have had, so you may have to take a civil case of both the developers (and their consultants who designed the system), and the Council department (who have signed-off the design and the implementation). That photo could be an overflow. The Land Drainage Act basically says once the natural flow has been modified, i.e. by paving / building or diverting water, you cannot just divert water to your neighbours downslope / downstream.

The inevitable consequences of climate change?

Possibly but its always worth remembering that rare events be rare you might have had a bit more rain fall on your road than usual and that's enough to send it over the edge.

Climate change will make bad events more frequent but its worth remembering at some point there will always be a worse one.

When we moved here we had problems with rainwater run off into our 'barns' from the road that passes, so I just got a chap in with a digger & dumper and had him put a french drain in (about 1m deep and 50m long).

It seemed easier/cheaper to just do it, especially as we did it on a Sunday so there'd be less 'prying' eyes.

@docrobster have a look on your council planning website, the drainage system might be detailed with plans there

Have just found that wzzzz… thanks for the tip…
Document shows the drains leading to storage tank which then discharges to a drainage ditch
Shown here

So would you expect to see water flowing out from this? There has never been any to my knowledge…

So would you expect to see water flowing out from this? There has never been any to my knowledge…

Yes that storage tank is designed to hold the water hitting impermeable surfaces on the site (plus a percentage for climate change, not sure what the EA use now 20 or 30 percent I think.)

The hydrobrake stops the flow out of the tank exceeding 5litres per second.

So during a rainfall even you should be seeing anything from a trickle to 2.5 big bottles of water coming out every second.

Is any of the development finished? Road surfaces or houses because that's what's feeding the tank if the roads aren't surfaced and the roofs aren't tiled./gutters not fitted not a lots will be getting into the system. I'd wait until it rains and go and take some pictures of it.

It also wouldn't be the first building site with poor mad management cometwly blocking the surface water system completely.

Yeah it’s mostly finished. Certainly the houses at the end where the tank is. People moved in a while back.
Should rain again soon. Shame I’m isolating with COVID it was torrential last night I could’ve gone up then.
Thanks for the help. We spoke to the council ranger who looks after the woods, where it’s supposed to drain into there is a trench with a little wooden bridge over it just down from the drain. He reckoned he’s never seen water in the trench…

I'm not really a surface water guy to be fair. It sounds like Konagirl might be though. Probably work for the same company 😂

So it’s rained and the neighbour has been up and taken some pics
No water has moved through this pipe
The leaves inside the entrance to the outlet are still dry!

Time to email the council…

in reply to docrobster - If you're not getting a helpful response from your local council I would write to the developer. Companies (the good ones anyway) generally don't won't their operations or developments to have a negative impact on local residents and the better ones will probably be proactive in looking into any complaints. If they ignore you find the environmental statement (ES) and or hydrogeological and hydrological impact assessments (HIA) with the planning documents and write carefully worded emails to the companies that produced them. Ask for help and be polite. At the very least I hope you'd get a polite reply and your email forwarded to the right person at the developer.

Bazz, need to try and work out where the water is coming from... High groundwater levels, excess run off from neighbours, from the road, blocked ditches etc.

Thanks @mwleeds I will bear that in mind. Developer is a big local firm that have built a lot of houses round us so I presume they won’t want bad publicity

What you need is a drain.

Get everyone affected to chip in and water be gone.

What you need is a drain.

Drains need an outlet and potentially permission from the relevant authorities.

Boring I know

Drains need an outlet and potentially permission from the relevant authorities.

Boring I know

I think you are overcomplicating things, wherever the water is coming from needs drained, who owns the road? that's the simple way, the more complicated way is drain around your property, hard to say exactly how without seeing the ground but there is always a way to direct water.

May be picking up wrong but the mental image is a hill? water coming from road into first property, often misses a few then collects at the end/lowest property? outlet is there, divert the water from top to bottom and gone.

Not boring, I love drains.

https://nationalfloodforum.org.uk/about-flooding/flood-facts/whos-responsible-for-what/

Quick up date for anyone who cares or is interested, have been speaking to the neighbours and then have been doing some investigating as well and there appears to be a couple of contributing factors, firstly is the maintenance of the lane, it has become a little eroded and rainfall no longer flows on to peoples front gardens and drains away naturally, rather it all follows the wheel ruts and flows to the lowest point, also a couple of years a go the Ashdown forest rangers dug some drainage ditches in parts of the surrounding forest, these appear to have become blocked with leaves and branches.

So going forward we are going to try 2 things, firstly some repairs ( stand by for what aggregate for road repairs thread!) to the lane to see if we can improve the flow of water, and secondly maintenance on the drainage ditches.

Thanks for all of your inputs, there is some useful links and ideas here 😀

When original drains stop taking water away the result is it finds it's own path of least resistance, leads to a miniature river down unsurfaced roads.

Clearing existing drains is first job, usually just a matter of removing debris, but then you can see the water running where it's meant to and if there is something contributing to it further uphill, most flooding is just years of neglect.