Question to the Department for Environment, Food and Rural Affairs:

To ask His Majesty's Government what estimate they have made of the number of misconnections to the sewerage system for (1) homes, and (2) schools.

In 2019 around 150,000 to 500,000 homes in the UK were estimated to have drain misconnections. Defra does not have numbers of misconnections for schools.

Property owners are legally responsible for resolving misconnected pipework on their property; public misconnections are the responsibility of water companies.

Should misconnections not be resolved, the responsible party can be prosecuted; in some cases, local authorities and water companies can access private property to fix misconnections and then recover their costs from the owner.