Compliance and responsibility

Who is responsible for a private pumping station?

• The transfer was statutory. Made under section 105A of the Water Industry Act 1991.
• Pumping stations had until 1 October 2016. A later date than the sewers and lateral drains transfer.
• Not everything transferred. Newer stations and single property stations generally stayed private.
• Confirm, do not assume. The water company is the authority on whether a specific asset vested.

What the transfer did

The background is a programme to bring privately owned drainage assets into public ownership. Under section 105A of the Water Industry Act 1991, sewerage undertakers were required to transfer private sewers, lateral drains and pumping stations into public ownership in accordance with schemes made under the relevant regulations.

Sewers and lateral drains transferred first. Pumping stations were given a longer implementation period, with the regulations specifying that pumping stations forming part of a sewer or lateral drain must vest by a date no later than 1 October 2016. That later deadline is why the two are often confused, and why people sometimes conclude a station did not transfer when in fact it transferred later than the pipework around it.

Where a station did vest, responsibility for maintaining, repairing and replacing it passed to the water company, along with the associated cost.

Which stations stayed private

The transfer was broad but not universal, and the exceptions are where most disputes arise.

Broadly, a station serving only a single property within that property’s own curtilage was not within the scope of the transfer, and remained the owner’s responsibility. Stations constructed after the transfer regime came into effect were not caught by it either, which means a great many pumping stations on newer developments are private unless they have since been adopted through the separate adoption process for new assets.

Assets that do not connect to the public sewer are a different matter again. A station serving a package treatment plant discharging to ground or to a watercourse is not part of the public sewerage system and is the operator’s responsibility, with its own permitting considerations.

The practical consequence for anyone managing an estate is that ownership cannot be inferred from the age or appearance of the asset. It has to be established.

How to establish where a specific station sits

Start with the sewerage undertaker for the area. They hold the record of what vested and are the authority on whether a particular station is theirs. A drainage and water search, or a direct asset enquiry, will normally settle it.

For newer sites, check whether the station was built under an adoption agreement and whether that adoption was ever completed. It is common to find stations that were intended for adoption, built to the relevant standard, and then left unadopted because a condition was never discharged. Those remain private, often to the surprise of everyone involved.

Where responsibility does sit with the site, the operational exposure is real. A pumping station that fails backs sewage up into the properties it serves, and the consequences arrive quickly because wet well storage is measured in hours at most. Level monitoring in the wet well and confirmation that pumps are actually running gives warning while the station is still filling, which for a private asset with no third party watching it is usually the only warning available.