Neighbours water pipe, our land, WWYD?

[Howdilydoodilyneighbour]

I'll start by saying we have nice neighbours (an elderly lady and her adult son)

Their mains stopcock is is by our back door and about 2m of pipe runs under our patio and into their property. This pipe sprung a leak, and the bill has come in at £300. So my first question is technically/legally who should pay? Us because it happened on our property or them because it's their pipe?

They mentioned in passing contributing to the cost of the repair, but here is my AIBU. The fence between our gardens was damaged in the recent storms and they replaced the whole thing (we would never have been able to afford it anyway) they never asked for money and I never offered any. I just assumed it was their fence and thanked my lucky stars they were willing to just get it done. So I feel a bit off asking for money for this pipe repair. Is that totally ridiculous as it was their fence to do as they wish? If not how do I take them up on their offer to contribute? We could really do without a £300 bill at the moment!!

YANBU: just suck it up and pay.
YABU: they should contribute, don't feel bad about it.

For the avoidance of doubt, I'm not trying to be a CF and will absolutely pay if it's our responsibility. But the plumber implied it should be them fixing it which just got me thinking.

Does it serve only their property or do you share the pipe?

If it's just for them, they pay. If it's for both of you, you share the costs.

www.ofwat.gov.uk/households/supply-and-standards/supply-pipes/

Pretty sure it’s your responsibility OP. Sorry. I say that because our downstairs neighbours had a leak and told us we had to replace as it was our pipe - the advice we had at the time was that it was that flat’s responsibility. (It was a block of 12 so perhaps not as easy to identify whose it was!)

ooh i have a shared water pipe with one neighbour, did you know that means waterboard can not put a water metre on either of you. also caps the bill amount i cant remember

@tootiredtobother It depends on the layout. The water pipe from the main road is shared between 4 of us, and each of us has an individual pipe running off which we are responsible for but share the rest of the pipe.

Household insurance will cover individual pipework but not joint.

It only serves their property, definitely not shared. (God knows why it's in our garden!)

There's some diagrams in the link I sent, but from what you've said, sounds like it's their responsibility.

If it's just their water supply, and assuming you haven't done anything to cause the leak then it's their responsibility. Presumably they have a right of easement in their title deeds, which means they can have that stopcock/pipe, but that doesn't make it your responsibly to maintain it.

Would it be worth paying if at the same time you could reroute the pipe and relocate the stopcock so it’s all their side of the fence? And thus never an issue again.

Oh, that's why ours can't be metered and the cost's capped! DH spoke to the water board ages ago and they told him that but not why (or maybe they did but he didn't tell me why.)

I don't know the legal answer OP but if they've offered to share the cost without prompting then I think it's fair enough to let them. They might feel they're taking advantage of you otherwise. We've just had to sort out some shared work between us and next door. Next door offered to go 50-50 on the cost but we've actually offered to pay a higher proportion as we're a bigger house and there's more of us living here. The legal position would probably be 50-50, but we felt like that would be taking advantage of our (lovely) neighbour. Your neighbours might well feel the same way about letting you pay the whole cost of the repairs.

Thanks everyone - so it sounds like they technically should be paying for the work. How on earth do I go about asking for it? I know it sounds stupid but I feel very awkward about the whole thing since they just spent god knows how much on a new fence. The works already been done as i just assumed it was our responsibility as on our land. And I don't want to keep the plumber waiting to be paid either