How to Report a Water Leak in the Road

First, what kind of water is it?

The right place to report a leak in the street depends on what is coming out of the ground, so spend a minute looking before you pick up the phone. Three different bodies deal with water in the road, and a report sent to the wrong one can sit unread.

• Clean water: clear, no smell or a faint swimming-pool smell of chlorine, running even in dry weather, often bubbling up through a crack, a joint in the paving or a small cover marked with the water company’s name. This is a drinking water main, a service pipe or a leaking hydrant
• Sewage: grey or brown, smells, may carry toilet paper, and usually comes from a manhole or rises up around one. This is a sewer, and in London the sewers are almost always Thames Water’s
• Rainwater: only there during or after rain, pooling around a road gully that is not draining. This is a highway drainage problem, not a leak

If the road has sunk, a hole has opened or water is spraying across a carriageway and putting people in danger, call 999 before anything else.

Who to report it to

Clean water and sewage both go to the water company. Thames Water supplies most of London, and its online leak reporting map at thameswater.co.uk/leak lets you mark the spot. The map also shows leaks other people have already reported, so you can see whether yours is known. Thames Water’s 24/7 WhatsApp line is useful if you want to send a photo while you are standing there. Reporting a leak to Thames Water explains what happens once the report is in.

Some outer parts of London get their drinking water from a different company, for example Affinity Water, SES Water or Essex & Suffolk Water. The name is on your water bill. If you are reporting a leak in a street you do not live in, ask a neighbour or check the company’s own coverage map before reporting. Sewage is different: Thames Water is the sewerage company across almost all of the capital, even where another company supplies the drinking water.

Blocked road gullies and flooding from rainwater go to the highway authority. On most roads that is the borough council, through its street reporting page. On red routes, the main roads with red lines at the kerb, it is Transport for London.

What to put in the report so a crew can find it

Leakage inspectors often have to trace a leak back from where the water shows, because water travels along the outside of a pipe and through gravel before it surfaces. The more exact you are, the less time they spend searching.

• The nearest house number or business, and which side of the road
• Where the water appears: a crack in the tarmac, a paving joint, a cover in the pavement, the kerb line
• How much: a damp patch, a trickle along the gutter, or a steady flow
• How long you have noticed it, and whether it has grown
• Whether nearby homes have low pressure or no water
• Anything unusual: a sunken patch, cracked paving, water coming up inside a building or a basement

Is the leak in the street actually yours?

Before you report it as a public leak, check whether it could be your own pipe. Your supply pipe runs from the water company’s stop tap, usually under a small cover in the pavement outside, to your house. The pipe on the street side of that tap belongs to the water company. The pipe on your side, including any length under your front garden or drive, is usually yours even where it runs under a shared path.

There is a simple way to tell. Close your inside stopcock, make sure nothing in the house is using water, and read your meter. Read it again half an hour later. If it has moved, water is escaping between the meter and your stopcock, which is your supply pipe. If the meter stays still and water keeps coming up outside, the leak is almost certainly on the company’s side of the stop tap. Finding your outside stop tap shows where to look and what key it needs.

If the leak is yours, you do not report it and wait. Once a supply pipe leak is confirmed, Thames Water gives you four weeks to repair it, and can do the work and charge you if you do not. Our emergency leak repair visit covers supply pipes as well as leaks inside the house; the £60 call-out gets an engineer to you at any hour and the repair price is agreed with you on site before any work starts.

What happens in the street after you report it

A leakage inspector usually comes out first, sometimes at night when traffic is light and listening equipment picks up the sound of a leak more easily. The inspector confirms the leak, marks the likely position on the road surface, usually with spray paint, and grades the job. Repairs are ranked by how much water is being lost, the effect on customers’ supply, how complex the job is and the location.

Digging in a road needs a street works permit, and a busy junction may need a lane or road closure agreed with the council. That is why you often see paint marks for days before anything happens. You can look up permits and planned works for a specific street on the One Network website, which is the most reliable sign that a date has been set.

Once the crew has dug down and repaired the pipe, the hole is filled and given a temporary surface. The permanent reinstatement often follows weeks later. If the patch sinks or breaks up in the meantime, report it to the water company as well, since the reinstatement is theirs until it is signed off.

If the leak has cut off your water

A burst main can drop pressure or cut the supply to a whole street. In England, when the water goes off without warning because of a burst or leak on a main, the company has 12 hours to restore it, and since July 2025 that includes bursts on large strategic mains. After that a household is owed £50 automatically, and another £50 for each further full 12 hours, under the Guaranteed Standards Scheme amounts that took effect in July 2025. Turn off any taps you opened while the water was off, so a sink with the plug in cannot overflow when the supply comes back. When it does, run the cold kitchen tap until any cloudiness or discolouration clears. No water after work in the street covers airlocks and low pressure after the supply comes back.