'I'm scared I can't sell my home after flooding'

Kellie Sutherland said she has had nightmares about the flooding

A woman from Hastings says she has been left traumatised and angry after her home flooded twice with sewage in 2023, less than a year after she bought the property.

Kellie Sutherland's home was flooded with sewage in January 2023 and then again in October 2023.

Searches were carried out by Southern Water at the time of purchase that concluded there was "no risk" of the house flooding.

Southern Water said "calculating flood risk is an extremely complicated process" and that Hastings' heavy rainfall was brought about by climate change.

'You can smell it'

Ms Sutherland, who is 54 and lives with her partner, said after heavy rain the basement of her Victorian house flooded with sewage that had emerged from a manhole.

"The first thing you can do is smell it," she said.

Before buying the property in central Hastings, she paid for a drainage and water search from Southern Water, which concluded that there was no risk of her home flooding due to overloaded public sewers.

She later discovered that her home had flooded multiple times in the 90s and had been put on a register for homes at risk of internal sewer flooding.

The house was removed from this register when the town’s storm tunnel system was built in 1997.

Ms Sutherland said there was not enough transparency about flooding when buying a house.

"We've worked our whole lives to have something that I'm worried we may not be able to sell or the value of it has massively decreased," she said.

At the time of the October flood, Ms Sutherland found out that an anti-flood device had been fitted to her home, which was the responsibility of Southern Water to maintain, but had not been serviced for more than five years.

Southern Water said anti-flood devices should be serviced every six months.

Ms Sutherland's basement was flooded after sewage emerged from a manhole

Ms Sutherland repeatedly reported the flooding to Southern Water, who sent out a team to clean the basement and replace her anti-flood device.

She said she would not have bought her home had she known the house had a history of flooding and that Southern Water had not properly maintained the flood defences at the property.

"You think is this going to happen again - that's a constant worry - and I did dream multiple times of coming downstairs and opening that door and finding it full of water. That doesn't make you feel safe in your own home," she said.

The BBC carried out a new drainage search from Southern Water on the property this summer, which concluded that despite the recent sewer flooding in the basement, it continued to be not at risk of internal flooding due to overloaded sewers.

Reporter Fiona Irving explores the manhole where the sewage came from

'The picture has changed'

Ashley Marsham, head of customer service at Southern Water, said: "Calculating flood risk is an extremely complicated process, and in Hastings the picture has changed greatly over the years.”

He said that last year significant flooding in the town was due to “intense rainfall brought on by climate change and the resultant overwhelming volume of surface water entering these sewers”.

He said the water company is now looking at a new model in Hastings to help it “better understand the impact of climate change and population growth” and “come up with the right solutions to properly assess and reduce the risks of flooding”.

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