A homeowner in Bristol has been left in debt after paying nearly £8,000 for sewage repairs that a water company later dug up to fix its own infrastructure. Nik Westgarth, 39, spent £7,990 on excavation and repair works after sewage backed up in his home in Greenbank, following advice from Wessex Water that the issue was his responsibility.
Private issue or public failure?
Westgarth asked Wessex Water to investigate the problem in February 2026. He says workers at the time told him the issue was private and therefore should be fixed by the homeowner. He then paid for the work, only for the same problem to arise in a nearby property five months later.
Neighbours also began experiencing sewage backing up into their homes, which prompted Wessex Water to investigate. According to Westgarth, the company then decided there was a major failure in its own sewage infrastructure, making it a repair the company was responsible for carrying out.
Damaged sewer found beneath his garden
The single father of one soon realised that the damaged section of the public sewer lay directly below where he had been having issues months earlier. Wessex Water has since returned to the site and carried out another major excavation where Westgarth’s own work had finished.
Westgarth said: ‘The February failure was directly above or extremely close to the sewer they later discovered had substantially failed. Yet, as far as the records supplied to me show, Wessex Water did not CCTV or properly investigate that sewer in February before deciding that the problem was private.’
He added: ‘They have taken down every single wall of my garden, and this is already after I already did it all, so they had to redo every single thing I had to do privately.’
Debt and depression
Westgarth said the cost has taken a heavy toll. ‘It’s a lot of money. I didn’t have that: I had to borrow it, and it’s left me in debt now. I have been really depressed. I’m a single dad (with) a three-year-old. It’s been awful. I’m absolutely exhausted.’
Since the new excavation began, Westgarth has launched a complaint with the utility company, asking it to provide the engineering evidence that led it to rule the sewer failure a private issue.
He said: ‘I feel I have repeatedly had to push Wessex Water simply to establish what happened and why. There is a wider public interest question here about what happens when a water company initially decides that a drainage failure is private, the homeowner spends thousands of pounds relying on that decision, and a substantial failure of the company’s own sewer is then discovered beneath the same area months later.’
Wessex Water said: ‘We can confirm that senior management are investigating this issue, in line with our standard complaints procedure.’
