Your question
Private Sewers: What changed?
In October 2011, the Government introduced new legislation in England and Wales which meant that the water companies took over responsibility for many sewer and drain pipes which were previously in private ownership.
The decision to do this was made to remove the burden from customers of complicated and costly repairs to these pipes when something went wrong.
In the North West, United Utilities took ownership of more than 32,000km of extra wastewater pipes.