By Lorelei Reddin, Community Content Editor
Southern Daily Echo – 18 July 2026
A New Forest family are sitting on a 'ticking timebomb waiting to go off' as a long-running dispute over a deteriorating water pipe running beneath their Lyndhurst home rumbles on. That's how New Forest East MP Sir Julian Lewis has described the situation, which centres around the disputed ownership of a surface water pipe said to be on the brink of collapse below Princes Crescent. His extensive attempts to persuade Southern Water to carry out repairs to the 60cm diameter pipe, which have also involved Hampshire County Council, DEFRA, Ofwat, the Consumer Council for Water and various other organisations, have so far fallen on deaf ears. Southern Water had initially promised a fix at the same time as repairs to a sewage pipe which runs parallel to the surface water pipe but abandoned the plans, deciding their liability for the problem ended there.
After many years of smaller repairs, sewage leaks and a significant sinkhole appearing, residents in the street also endured a noisy temporary pumping station, diggers and tankers outside their homes for 15 months while the repairs were carried out. The homeowners worst affected, who asked not to be named, endured countless sleepless nights as work continued below the bedroom window of their teenage son as he revised for his GCSEs. Searches when they purchased the property in 2013 – and since – confirm Southern Water's responsibility for the pipe and the couple have paid surface water charges each year since. Their home, built in 1899 and no longer covered by insurers for subsidence, is now at risk of catastrophic structural damage with cracks and subsidence, witnessed by the Daily Echo, clear to see.
A stream at the bottom of the garden, within the National Park, is measuring high levels of E.coli, confirmed by Gill Hickman from New Forest Water Watch and suggesting sewage contamination, and rats and flies have also become a problem in their garden. Now their nightmare continues.
Sir Julian Lewis MP told the Daily Echo:
"We've now reached a stalemate. But it's a ticking timebomb waiting to go off. This impasse has all the elements of a major accident waiting to happen. The consequences would be truly awful and my constituents have been put through more than enough trauma already.
"How you treat your customers is in a way a shorthand for how you behave as a business generally and anyone with an ounce of humanity would rid my constituents of this nightmare, rather than cobble together some half-baked cheapskate patchwork solution and dump the problem in the laps of the people least deserving of it and least able to put it right.
"It's totally inhumane. My constituents are completely stuck. Those providing a public service should not turn their backs on their customers. I think it's extremely regrettable. The strange thing is that even if the landowners were billionaires, and felt inclined to pay for the whole thing themselves, they probably wouldn't be allowed to."
Neighbours in Princes Crescent also reacted to the continuing saga. Richard Faint said:
"There has been no forward planning by Southern Water at all. The village is growing in size and it's working on a Victorian sewerage system. They have been taking money for a service and they have obligations. They can't just part repair and walk away. They need to come up with a plan."
Clive Turner added:
"It's only going to get worse and only going to cause more damage to the Forest and more distress to the people who live there. These organisations need to get together and sort it out."
In response to a series of questions put to Southern Water by the Daily Echo, a spokesperson said:
"We recognise this has been a difficult and lengthy situation for the residents involved and we remain committed to engaging with them while discussions continue. Our investigations indicate that the surface water sewer in question is not a Southern Water asset.
"Our records show it to be a private drain originating from the highway and it is not connected to our public foul or surface water sewer network. As a result, we do not have responsibility for its ownership, maintenance or repair. We remain focused on protecting our wastewater network, supporting customers where we can, and continuing our investment to help reduce flooding and protect the environment."
Hampshire County Council have also been approached for comment as the pipe constitutes a necessary branch of the Hampshire Highways' drainage network serving the nearby A35 Ashurst to Lyndhurst road.