ECDC has a legal duty under the Private Water Supply (England) Regulations 2016 to keep itself informed about the safety of large, commercial and small private water supplies in its area.
The way ECDC carries out its duties relating to private water supplies are controlled. These include:
- Undertaking risk assessments every five years
- Undertaking investigations where water is considered unwholesome
- Monitoring supplies by regularly testing the water
- Sampling and analysis procedures to ensure precision and accuracy of results
- Granting authorisations on application under specific circumstances
- Issuing notices where supplies constitute a potential danger to human health
- Keeping records of private water supplies for its area
- Fixed and reasonable charges for conducting risk assessments, investigations, sampling and testing
Where risk assessments or investigations or monitoring of water supplies indicates a potential danger to human health all users of the supply will be informed, given advice to allow them to minimise potential danger and where possible told of the degree of potential harm.
Under specific circumstances where ECDC determines that a supply is a potential danger to human health a notice will be served which will restrict use of the supply and may include improvements, which have to be made to help towards the provision of wholesome water.
Results are given to both the resident of the property where the sample was taken, and, if relevant, to the supply owner.
Remember, the quality of the water may vary at times, depending on factors such as recent weather conditions and changes in surrounding land-use.
If you are the owner of a private water supply that feeds water to a single dwelling and are concerned about the quality of your water supply, ECDC can undertake a risk assessment and monitoring.
Furthermore, you should contact ECDC if you already have your supply monitored but wish for more regular testing to be carried out. The costs will depend on the extent of the investigation required.
The supply owner is usually responsible for the cost, but can request a contribution from the users.
A list of the fees and charges relating to private water supplies are available below
Categorisation of Private Water Supplies and Frequency of Sampling
If the private supply provides 10 m3 or more of water daily, or provides water for a commercial activity, it will be controlled as per Regulation 9, and be required to have a risk assessment undertaken every 5 years with monitoring undertaken in accordance with Schedule 2.
For supplies providing a supply of less than 10 m3 of water daily it will be controlled as per Regulation 10 and be required to have a risk assessment undertaken every 5 years and be monitored in accordance with Schedule 1 where the risk assessment shows additional parameters are required to be tested for.
For single dwellings not used as a commercial activity only upon request from the owner will monitoring be undertaken. Under such circumstances a risk assessment is required and parameters tested for will be based on the findings of the risk assessment.