{"id":609767,"date":"2026-05-29T05:42:30","date_gmt":"2026-05-29T05:42:30","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/609767\/"},"modified":"2026-05-29T05:42:30","modified_gmt":"2026-05-29T05:42:30","slug":"the-misconnections-polluting-the-river-wandle-with-waste-water","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/609767\/","title":{"rendered":"The misconnections polluting the River Wandle with waste water"},"content":{"rendered":"<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">According to Ollard, misconnections are particularly difficult to deal with because identifying the source of the problem &#8211; and who is responsible &#8211; is often complex.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">&#8220;It&#8217;s hard to track,&#8221; she told the <a href=\"https:\/\/www.bbc.co.uk\/lnp\/ldrs\" class=\"ssrcss-1e0jzsh-InlineLink e1kn3p7n0\" rel=\"nofollow noopener\" target=\"_blank\">Local Democracy Reporting Service<\/a>. &#8220;You can only find out once you see the discharge.&#8221;<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Thames Water is responsible for investigating leaks and tracing them through drainage networks. <\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">However, once a misconnection is identified and traced to a property, it is a legal requirement for the homeowner to fix it.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">The company has said it has investigated more than 20 suspected misconnections in the past three years.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">Ollard said many homeowners are unaware their property is misconnected, and that older homes can have historic plumbing errors that only come to light once pollution is detected in a river.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">These issues are also not usually identified in surveys, meaning people may buy a home without realising it has an issue.<\/p>\n<p class=\"ssrcss-1q0x1qg-Paragraph e1jhz7w10\">She said: &#8220;Then they will get a letter saying it has been identified and they will then be required to do the work, which costs thousands of pounds.&#8221;<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"According to Ollard, misconnections are particularly difficult to deal with because identifying the source of the problem &#8211;&hellip;\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":609768,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[22],"tags":[1397,90,56,54,55],"class_list":["post-609767","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-environment","tag-environment","tag-science","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609767","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=609767"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/609767\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/609768"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=609767"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=609767"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=609767"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}