9 February - Knickers to Bexley Council
It has become part of my daily routine to open next door’s manhole and fish out
their sometimes soiled knickers from my primitive knicker trap. A reader kindly
drew my attention to the part of the Thames Water website which made it very
clear that since 2011 a shared sewer is their responsibility yet all they are
prepared to do is sell me a £10 a month plus £30 per call out insurance policy
to cover what is their responsibility anyway.
A fraud if ever there was one.
Yesterday the landlord called round. His tenant had reported bad smells from a
blocked downstairs toilet. All the drains mentioned until now served their
kitchen and upstairs bathroom but when the downstairs loo was flushed the two
manholes showed no evidence of it. I showed him the pile of retrieved ‘knickers’
and he agreed that it was not toilet paper. They don’t break up when hosed.
With the landlord’s help another manhole was uncovered. It showed ample evidence
that it had been recently been filled to the brim with you know what. We cleaned
it out and established that it serves only next door’s downstairs toilet. Yet
the bulk of the pipework and the only manhole is on my property. Whose
responsibility is that? Is it a shared drain at that point?
Much further down the pipe it becomes shared with my own but depending on where
my ignorant neighbour manages to block it next I may be able to ignore it. Meanwhile it is me
who now has three bits of a block drive to repair and perhaps it is Bexley Council’s fault.
What sort of planning allows all the plumbing from one house to run under another
which it doesn’t service?
What sort of family carries on chucking ‘knickers’ down the drain after blocking it twice?