Patio floods during heavy rain - who to call about drainage issues?

[allduffedup]

We've had some very heavy thunderstorms/rain recently, which has led to our entire patio flooding. It stopped raining a hour ago, but there is still an inch or so of standing water out there.

We do have some sort of manhole cover in one corner of our patio, so presumably there is some drainage somewhere, but it is obviously not very effective. Interestingly, when there is this much rain in such a short amount of time, the water actually drains out through the garage, which is at the side of the house, then runs down the front drive and onto the street!

The patio is the width of the house and extends about 10 feet away. The lawn is beyond the patio, and raised about 6 inches above it. It is about 50 feet to the end of the garden, which gently slopes upwards with about another 6 inches of gain in height. We have clay soil, which probably doesn't help.

Anyway, we need to improve the drainage on our patio, and possible on the lawn too. Any ideas who to call? A landscaping company for example?

rainwater will not go down a manhole.

If your patio is ponding, then it presumably does not have enough "fall" (slope) on it for the water to run towards the garden and soak into the ground

Possibly it was installed by someone who didn't know how, possibly there has been settlement and it has tilted towards the house; possibly the garden has been raised to prevent water running onto it, possibly additional paving has been laid so that water cannot soak in.

You say the garden slopes down towards the house, so rainwater will rend to run towards the house, which is very undesirable.

You need to alter the patio so that it slopes away from the house, and perhaps dig a trench and lay a French Drain to a soakaway. You are not allowed to put ground water into a sewer. A garden company might do it for you.

Yes, we understand water does not currently drain from the patio into the manhole cover, but we assume the manhole cover is covering a drain which accepts water from our gutters as there is no sewage water at the back of our property (kitchen and bathroom both at the front of the house). There are three pipes draining into it, and I assume these are coming from our/our neighbour's downpipes. Can we really not connect anything further to this?

The patio is currently pretty much flat, but even if we tilted it, the water will not get to the garden as there is a step to the lawn which is about 6 inches in height.

you aren't allowed to put groundwater into drains.

Your garden and patio appear to have been accidentally designed to work as a pond.

I think you need a French drain between the garden and the patio to catch the water, for a start.

Some well-dug flowerbeds across the lawn would help rainwater to soak in.