Exeter woman unable to return home months after house flooded with raw sewage

ITV West Country's Richard Lawrence speaks to Jessica Powell at her home in Exeter

A woman who's home in Exeter has been repeatedly flooded with raw sewage is calling for improvements to drainage systems.

Jessica Powell had just finished renovating her first home in September 2023 when it began to flood, and with much of the water containing human waste.

"It was awful," Jessica said.

"Seeing all of that stuff coming into our home that we've spent two years building. We're first time buyers, it's already a really tricky market out there anyway.

"We put all of our savings into this house and then, to see it destroyed in 20 minutes was the worst thing in the entire world."

The floors Jessica and her husband had sanded down had to be replaced, their belongings were left floating in the water, and the couple have had to spend months waiting for their home to dry out.

But she has said one of her biggest frustrations has been trying to get South West Water to admit that the flooding came from one of their drains that overflowed.

Jessica said: "It took so many back and forth emails just to get them to admit that their drain flooded. And even when they did admit it, they said it wasn't our house that was flooded by the drain.

"But they cleaned the front and back garden because there was sanitary waste in there."

September 2023's deluge was exceptional and led to flooding right across Devon. But it is not the first time Jessica's home has flooded - with a previous issue seeing their front and back garden submerged in September 2022.

Despite it being six months since the most recent flood, the pair are still unsure of when they will be able to move back in.

Even now, a large skip sits in the front garden of the property - full of things that have had to be binned following the floods.

"This is the second skip full of our contents", Jessica explained.

"This time round, it's full of our building contents, but we had a whole other skip full of our personal belongings.

"That was really, really difficult to see: Things that we first brought and things from our wedding, and stuff that had to be thrown in the skip. That was pretty heart-wrenching, really."

Jessica hopes that other victims of flooding will also speak out so that more pressure can be put on water companies to improve drainage networks, in a bid to prevent homes from flooding in the future.

In a statement, a spokesperson for South West Water said: "We are working hard to determine the cause of this issue so we can take steps to make sure it does not happen again.

“We are very sorry for the impact this has caused to the affected customers and we’ll continue to work with them on a long-term solution.”