Yorkshire Water has spent £750,000 in the past year on surveying activities to locate and remove sewer blockages.

The work is continuing in 2011 – during January Yorkshire Water teams have carried out detailed surveys as part of the company's pro-active work to help prevent incidents of internal flooding caused by blockages in sewers in hot-spot areas.

In Bradford city centre the teams have checked around 17,890 properties for blockages, lifting 6169 manholes to see whether the public sewers underneath are running freely, checked around 8500 drains on customer properties to make sure there are no blockages, used high pressured water jets to clear out any blockages and where necessary, put CCTV cameras down into the sewers to understand how severe the problem is and what needs to happen to prevent it from happening in the future.

The surveys found 160 blockages, of which 32 were caused by people putting fat down their sinks and it solidifying in their pipes.

Chris Bradshaw, network technician at Yorkshire Water said:

"Over the last year we have spent £750,000 searching for and clearing blockages right across the region. By carrying out these pro-active surveying activities we are aiming to help prevent any incidents of internal flooding occurring as a result of blocked sewers. Often the problem has been caused by people putting unsuitable items down their toilets and sinks - in the case of areas of Bradford, this was cooking fat.

"On this occasion, a number of the blockages were on the customers own private pipes and therefore the responsibility of the customer to clear. What we want to highlight to customers is that these types of blockages can cause sometimes devastating problems to customers homes and by simply disposing of their fat in another way this can be easily prevented."

The company has also been surveying large sections of Halifax's underground network, with teams checking over 5250 properties for blockages, lifting 1800 manholes and checking around 2500 drains on customer properties.

So far the results in the HX3 area of Halifax have been extremely encouraging, with over 90% less blockages found in sewers and drains in the area compared to last year. This year only 5 blockages were found of which 2 were caused by people putting fat down their sinks and it solidifying in their pipes. Last year, the same area was surveyed, 53 blockages were found and a fifth of them were caused by fat.

As part of its efforts to reduce sewer blockages, Yorkshire Water is offering customers a free fat cake making kit that will allow them to recycle their cooking fat rather than putting it down the sink.