Damn waterboard's gonna cost me £1500

[srebbe64]

A couple of years ago we had a water leak on our property - between the road and the house. The waterboard came out, fixed it (eventually), and I thought no more of it.

However, last week we had a note through the door saying that they think we've got another leak (I assume they measure the water). The waterboard came out today and said "it's the same problem, but this time it's gonna cost a lot of money because the first fix is free, but subsequent callouts are not". Now maybe I'm a bit thick, but if it's the same problem then clearly they didn't fix it properly the first time. Or am I being unreasonable?

[nel]

Where's your meter? Upstream of the meter is their problem, downstream of it is yours I suspect.

[B17NNS]

not unreasonable at all.

if the problem has reoccured in such a short space of time the first repair was not correctly done.

tell em bobbins

[Whoozit]

You may want to look into responsibility for the leaky pipe. IIRC the piping on the house side of the stopcock is yours, everything else is theirs. I had a leak from the stopcock itself a few years backs, and Thames Water came round, dug up my front garden (paved over so not a big deal) replaced/repaired and put the paving back exactly as it was. No charge.

Does anyone else know what the law/practice actually is?

[BliarOut]

nel said:

Where's your meter? Upstream of the meter is their problem, downstream of it is yours I suspect.

I believe the cutoff point is the stopcock, not the meter.

[rsvmilly]

The water boards' (or any statutory suppliers') responsibility includes the meter. ie the meter is theirs. I would argue that their responsibility ends at whichever is the furthest; the meter or the main stopcock.

[BliarOut]

All explained here

www.anglianwater.co.uk/assets/COP_SECTION_6.pdf

[vee]

Between the road and house is their problem - sounds like you ended up speaking someone who's not very well informed.

Our meter was leaking a couple of weeks ago, waterboard sent out an engineer to fix.

My mother in law has a shop unit with a basement flat in London.
Local waterboard dug up the pavement outside the shop and left it open for a couple of weeks. It rained a lot in that time and the flat got water damaged.
Got a loss assessor involved and they paid up.

If I were you I'd speak to someone with a bit of seniority and explain the situation. If they still refuse to sort it write to them and warn them that you will sue for any damage that occurs to your property as a result of the the unrepaired leak.

They'll sort it pretty quickly then.