Land

Sewerage undertaker power to lay and maintain pipes discharge of surface water into canal no implied power to allow discharge without consent and without paying compensationBritish Waterways Board v Severn Trent Water Ltd: CA (Peter Gibson, Chadwick and Keene LJJ): 2 March 2001The defendant, a sewerage undertaker, had discharged surface water through a drainage pipe it had adopted into a canal vesting in the applicant, the navigation authority.

The applicant sought a declaration that the defendant had no statutory power to discharge.The judge dismissed the application, holding that the defendant had an implied power, which was not subject to any general duty to compensate persons suffering consequential loss or damage, to cause water in its pipes to be discharged into any available watercourse.

The applicant appealed.Charles Flint QC and Michael Fordham (instructed by Eversheds, Leeds) for the authority; Michael Beloff QC and Richard Macrory (instructed by Herbert Smith) for the undertaker.Held, allowing the appeal, that there was no power implicit in the express statutory power granted to a sewerage undertaker to lay and maintain pipes under section 159 of the Water Industry Act 1991 to discharge water from its sewers into canals, watercourses or onto land in which a sewer had been laid without the owners consent and without compensating for loss and damage arising from such discharge; and that, accordingly, the defendant had no power to discharge the surface water into the canal and a declaration would be granted.(WLR)