Shared drains ending in our garden, how can we get neighbours to share costs of unblocking?

[Pannacotta]

We share drains with two other houses - their drains both join into ours and the drains run through our garden before joining the mains.

Since we moved in a year ago there have been repeated blockages.

We've had several drainage companies round and have paid out prob £300 in total to have them unblocked.

The last time was last week and a tampon and a huge block of cooking fat was found (tampons not used in our house and all our cooking fat carefully put into kitchen bin not down sink).

Our neighbours know we share drains (one of them told us), we had raw sewage spilling into our garden last week so had to run and tell them not to use any water until problem was fixed.

However, neither set of neighbours is offering to share costs.

How can we politely ask them to cough up?
Am bit surprised that they havent offered even though they know the drains are shared...

Thanks, Grapefruit. That's what I thought.

When we lived in London some years ago we had a leaflet through the door from Thames Water telling us about their new legal responsibilities for shared drains / sewers. Yes they actually told us, who would’ve thunk.
Anyway, we were at the end of a drain chain that served 5 houses then joined the main sewer when someone further back had a blockage. First we knew about it was when Dynarod turned up on the doorstep at 8pm one day asking to check and rod / clear the drain for Thames Water. One phone call to Thames Water later to verify they were real and there would be no costs to us I let them get on with it.

Final thought, we moved to the Anglian area 2 years ago and I specifically checked the web site before moving and it states they have exactly the same legal responsibility for any drain where 2 or more homes have fed into the same pipe. Note - their responsibility only begins at the point where the pipes of 2 homes join. Before that the home owner is on their own.

We had blocked drains too, all the houses in our side of the street are connected, it goes from next door (top of the hill) to us and then downhill from there through each front garden, then out into the middle of the street.
The water company has been out and fixed it all twice since we moved in (5 years), no cost to any of us. They fix it then send a letter warning not to flush anything but toilet paper. Last block contained fat, baby wipes, and tampons.

This thread is ten years old. It's a zombie.

I see that your sewers have seemingly been blocked by a fat ball and tampons - but your neighbours say that they did not put these things down the loo.

We had the same problem - I wonder if saying 'blocked by fat ball and sanitary products' is a standard Severn Trent response, despite the fact that they do not/cannot look what the block is? In our case, we pressed them, and they finally came and relined what turned out to be broken and inadequate main sewer and lateral.

I had a shared drain in my favourite house and had people out twice but it kept getting blocked. It wasn't from me or my immediate neighbor. I eventually rang our water board who came out for free, sorted it out and went to the neighbor who was stuffing stuff down the toilet to tell her to stop.

So maybe your water board might come out?

If not, then yes they share the cost

Let the zombie die.