Leaks
If you own your home, you're responsible for any leaks within the boundary of your property. This includes the water supply pipe, internal pipes, fittings and appliances. If you’re a tenant, this is your landlord’s responsibility to fix and maintain.
Leaks in public places are our responsibility to fix.
What to do if you have a leak at home
It’s important you take action as soon as you discover a leak or we report one to you. Once we've confirmed the leak, you must arrange to get it fixed within four weeks.
To fix your leak, you can either:
- contact your home emergency plan or insurance policy provider to see if you're covered for leak repair
- arrange repair yourself using one of our WaterSafe approved plumbers
If you decide to use your own plumber, we'll come out to check that the leak has been fixed properly. You'll be charged for any further repairs we carry out, if their work doesn't meet our standards.
Once the leak is fixed, let us know so we can update our records.
Let us know if you've fixed a leak
If you don't fix a leak
If you don't get the leak fixed within four weeks, we’ll need to step in to protect our supply and the environment. We'll send you a legal notice under Section 75 of the Water Industry Act 1991 and may need to recover repair costs from you.
You'll also be responsible for arranging and paying for any damage the leak causes to your property or a neighbour's.
See our terms and conditions for more information.
Help and support
We understand that many of our customers may experience financial difficulties, which can make it difficult to pay for leak repair. If you've registered for one of our financial support schemes or priority services register, we may be able to help.
Check if you're eligible for financial support.
If you aren't sure what to do, please get in touch. Our friendly team can help you find the right solution.
Allowance for leak costs
If you have a meter and a leak on your property, this could increase your bill. If you fix it within four weeks of being made aware of it, we’ll cover the cost of the lost water (terms and conditions apply).
Complete a leak allowance form and return it to us within three months of fixing your leak. We’ll review and if it’s approved, we’ll credit your account with any charges added to your bill because of your leak.
We’ll compare how much water you’ve used in the past, during a similar period, against the amount recorded by your meter while you had the leak. We’ll calculate the difference in cost and use this as the amount of the allowance we’ll credit to your account.
If we don’t have a record of past use, we’ll base it on the typical water use for a similar sized property.
Frequently asked questions
Leaks in public places
If you see a leak that isn’t on your property while out and about, you can report the leak online.
Learn more about how we find and fix leaks in our video.
Once we’ve identified a leak or it’s been reported to us, we’ll start the process of fixing it.
- Investigate: One of our leakage teams will check what needs to be done to fix the leak and how urgent it is. We prioritise repairs based on factors like the size of the leak, the complexity and the location.
- Plan: We’ll always plan the repair as quickly as possible and aim to minimise disruption. We may sometimes need to work with other organisations to plan the repair. We may need to work with the council and highways authorities if we need to close a road, for example. In these cases, planning can take a little longer.
- Repair: Once the plan is in place, we’ll send a repair team to fix the leak. This might involve turning off the water or redirecting water around other pipes. Sometimes the repair teams need to dig down to the pipe by hand to be safe, particularly if it’s in a tricky position and surrounded by other utility pipes like gas mains. When the pipe has been fixed, we resurface the road which can take time to set safely.
How we're tackling leaks
You can learn more about how we’re tackling leaks in our leakage performance report and our fixing and upgrading our network page.
Plus find out about how we're using artificial intelligence to find and fix leaks quicker with FIDO.

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£8 a month for the first year. Homeowners and new customers only. £30 excess per completed repair. Terms and exclusions apply, see website for full details.