Highway maintenance

Flooding and drainage

When flooding happens, we need to make sure the water is cleared quickly and effectively from roads and pavements.

This can be helped by maintaining the road drainage systems intended to remove water efficiently from the road surface. When this is not enough, we'll take further measures to make sure roads stay open and safe.

Blocked gullies and general road flooding are our responsibility, rivers fall under the jurisdiction of the Environment Agency. The environment agency has a 24-hour Floodline advice and information service is provided for floods and flood warnings.

Roadside ditches and private sewers or drains are the responsibility of the landowner. The local water authority is responsible for public sewers and burst water mains, while the council will take responsibility for car parks and amenity areas. An overflowing manhole is our responsibility, possibly in conjunction with the local water authority.

During winter, all water or sewer leaks must be reported to us so that we can carry out winter maintenance.

Many roads have drainage systems which are inspected and maintained on a regular basis, and are cleared or repaired depending on the:

type of road (classified or unclassified)
importance of the drain to preventing the road or properties from being flooded or ice forming on the road in winter
available funding

Report a flooding or drainage issue

If the flood or drainage issue is causing an immediate danger to the safety of road users or there's a risk of a property flooding, this is classed as an emergency - call us on 01572 722 577 during office ours. Out of hours Call Harborough Lifeline on 01858 464 499.

You can report non-emergency issues through our FixMyStreet service.

Requesting new or additional drainage

To request new or additional drainage, email highways@rutland.gov.uk.

It's illegal to discharge drainage directly on to the highway or connect private drainage into any highway drainage system. You must contact us if you intend to carry out alterations to drainage or make changes in land use which might result in surface water discharging on to the highway, or increased flows in highway drainage.

Maintenance of roadside gullies

Keeping gullies clean and fully operational is our responsibility. Blocked and damaged roadside drains, known as gullies, can cause a hazard to highway users, particularly during periods of heavy rain.

Our approach to highway flooding is one of both proactive and reactive maintenance:

highway gullies are programmed for scheduled cleaning and function checking. Cleaning can also involve water pressure jetting to clear associated pipework
gullies reported as blocked throughout the year are logged and left until the scheduled visit, unless they're a health and safety issue
we add gullies reported with missing or broken grates to our programme for maintenance of non-urgent works, unless they're a danger to the public - we'll deal with these as soon as possible
we maintain a database of issues reported by the public or council workers. We prioritise these against our standard procedure and investigate and fix issues when maintenance budgets allow

It's important to remember problems occur even when drainage systems are clean and well maintained, for example as a result of: