Water Leak in My Area: How to Check and Report It

Is it a leak in the area, or a problem at your house?

Low pressure, no water or cloudy water can come from a burst in the street or from something in your own pipes, and the fix is completely different. Two minutes of checks tell you which.

• Turn on the cold kitchen tap. It is fed straight from the mains on almost every property. If it runs normally but other taps are weak or dry, the problem is inside the house, often a tank, a valve or an airlock
• Check the inside stopcock, usually under the kitchen sink, is fully open. Turn it gently anticlockwise; someone may have part-closed it
• Ask a neighbour on the same side of the street. If they have lost water or pressure too, it is almost certainly the network
• Look outside for water running along the gutter or rising through the pavement, and for the water company’s vans or temporary barriers
• In cold weather, check exposed pipes in the loft, garage or under the sink for frost. A frozen pipe looks like an area-wide cut from inside the house

If your cold kitchen tap is dry and your neighbours have water, do not wait for the water company. The fault is almost always on your side of the boundary, and nobody is coming to fix it unless you arrange it.

How to see what the water company already knows

Thames Water supplies most of London and publishes a live map of problems it is working on. Search your postcode and it shows reported leaks, bursts and planned work, with the status of each one. A handful of outer boroughs get their water from Affinity Water, SES Water or Essex & Suffolk Water instead, and each posts its own updates on supply problems. The company name is on your water bill.

For roadworks, the One Network website is often more precise. It shows every street works permit, planned and urgent, on a map, so you can see whether a crew is booked to dig outside your house and roughly how long the works are expected to last.

If the map shows nothing and several households are affected, report it. Thames Water takes reports online at thameswater.co.uk/leak and through a 24/7 WhatsApp service. Reporting a leak in the road covers what details to include so an inspector can find it.

What a leak nearby does to your water, and what to do meanwhile

A small leak on a main may not affect you at all. A larger one can lower pressure along the whole street, and a repair usually means the main is shut down for a few hours, so taps go dry and then come back with air and sediment in them.

While you wait, turn off a combi boiler or an immersion heater if the hot water side has run dry, and do not run the washing machine or dishwasher. When the supply returns, run the cold kitchen tap until the water is clear. White, cloudy water that clears from the bottom of a glass is air and is harmless. Brown or orange water is disturbed sediment from inside the main; keep running the cold tap until it clears and avoid washing whites until it does. Cloudy water after the supply comes back explains how long each kind should take.

If the water went off without warning because of a burst or leak on a main, the Guaranteed Standards Scheme in England gives the water company 12 hours to restore it, and since July 2025 that includes large strategic mains. If it misses that, a household is due a £50 payment, plus £50 for each further full 12 hours, capped at twice the annual water supply charge. Planned work lasting more than four hours needs at least 48 hours’ written notice, so a sudden cut with no letter usually means an emergency repair.

When the leak in your area turns out to be yours

Sometimes the leak everyone has been looking at is on a private supply pipe. Your supply pipe runs from the water company’s stop tap, normally under a small cover in the pavement, to your house, and you own it from the boundary of your property. On older terraced streets one pipe can feed several houses, and then the neighbours share responsibility for the shared length. Who owns the mains water pipe sets out the common layouts.

To test yours, shut the inside stopcock, make sure no cistern is refilling, read your meter and read it again half an hour later. Any movement means water is escaping between the meter and the house. Thames Water may also write to you if its own leak detection work finds a leak at your address. Either way, once a leak on your property is confirmed you have four weeks to get it repaired.

Signs that the problem is inside the house rather than the street are worth knowing too: a damp patch on a ceiling or wall, a meter that turns with every tap off, a hissing pipe at night, or a loft tank that keeps filling. Hidden leak signs goes through each one.

When to call a plumber rather than the water company

Call a plumber when the checks point inside your boundary: neighbours have water and you do not, the meter moves with everything off, water is coming through a ceiling, or you can hear water running with every tap shut. The water company will not repair pipes on your side of the boundary, although Thames Water says it may be able to help customers registered for its financial support or priority services.

If you have no water at all and the street is fine, our no water emergency visit works through the stopcock, the supply pipe and the internal plumbing in order. For a leak you can see or hear, the leak repair service traces and repairs it. The £60 call-out covers getting an engineer to you at any hour, and the repair price is agreed with you on site before any work starts.