Severn Trent Water did not have map of its own sewer network in Bishop's Cleeve

SEVERN Trent Water has failed to fix pipe problems which have blighted a homeowner because it did not have a map of its own sewer network.

Terry Watkins had to provide the water company with a map of the sewers beneath Kayte Lane in Bishop's Cleeve this month, after dozens of its workmen repeatedly failed to tackle a blockage which was causing his toilet to overflow.

This was despite Severn Trent taking over the management of the network in the area in 2011.

Fed up with Severn Trent failing to tackle the problem, 68-year-old Mr Watkins tracked down Pye, the developers who built the estate, in order to get a map of the sewers.

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This followed a year of Severn Trent sending out staff to the problem.

But they were unable to resolve it because, without a map of the sewers, they could not locate the source of the blockage. As a result, each workman was only able to drain the manhole near Mr Watkins' home to temporarily stop the toilet overflowing.

For six days over Christmas Mr Watkins was forced to use the toilet at the nearby Tesco store and his daughter's home because his own was blocked.

Mr Watkins said: "It has been dreadful the way Severn Trent Water has handled this. The people they have sent have been excellent and done everything they could to help us and reported the problem back to the office, but it has fallen on deaf ears."

A Severn Trent spokesman said it will now use the map and CCTV cameras to find the source of the blockage. She added: "Unfortunately, one of the problems we faced when we took on responsibility for the extra sewer pipes in 2011 is that we didn't have a full understanding of where these pipes were or what condition they were in. In the case of Kayte Lane, this was an unadopted estate, meaning that although the developers had designed and built the drains and sewers, we were not responsible for them at the time."