Report
If you are reporting this defect outside normal working hours – 8.30am to 5.30pm, Monday to Friday – and you believe it is an urgent problem and a risk to public safety, please phone the police on 101.
For up to date information about floods affecting roads in Somerset, please visit the Travel Somerset website.
When you contact us to report a blocked drain, please provide the following information:
- Your name and phone number, in case we need to contact you
- Where the drain is, including the road name and area
- If it is outside a specific property
We will come to inspect the site by the end of the next working day, if possible.
Sewage
If a drain is overflowing and the water is very smelly, it is probably sewage. This needs to be dealt with by whoever is responsible for the sewer. This may be the owner of the property or Wessex Water if it is a main sewer.
Wessex Water Leakstoppers 0800 692 0 692
Wessex Water Emergencies 0345 600 4 600
If the sewage is coming from a connection to the main sewer or from a cesspit or septic tank, the property owner is responsible and will probably need to contact a plumber or a specialist.
Planned maintenance
We operate a planned maintenance programme for cleaning highway surface water drains on all the roads we maintain.
How often we do this depends on where they are (the classification of the road) and the relative risk of flooding.
- Gullies in flood susceptible areas will be cleaned every year
- Gullies in rural non-flood susceptible areas (outside a 30mph or 40mph speed limit) will be cleaned every two years
- Gullies in urban non-flood susceptible areas (inside a 30 or 40mph speed limit) will be cleaned every four years
The planned programme is reviewed and adjusted each year to respond to the changing nature of risk and flooding on the county’s road network.
Where defects or flooding are identified, outside the planned gully cleansing routine, these will be dealt with as necessary.