CCTV Drain Survey in Lewisham — See the Fault Before You Buy

Most of the drainage in Lewisham was laid by builders who are long gone, and almost none of it is on the surveyor's checklist. A CCTV drain survey puts a camera in the pipe and records what is actually there, so you find out about a cracked length, a root-filled joint or a collapsed section while the sale is still negotiable rather than the week you move in. It is a small cost against the cost of replacing a private drain run under a floor or a garden.

Why Lewisham Buyers Book A Survey Before Exchange

Lewisham has a housing mix that makes private drains unusually varied within a few streets. The borough's own housing retrofit strategy records that the most common wall type here is solid brick, in homes usually built before the 1930s, and that the Victorian and Edwardian terraces common in London are a defining feature of the borough. The borough characterisation study dates its Catford Victorian housing to around the late 1890s.

Those houses arrived with the pitch drains, brick barrel and trap layouts that are still in the ground. A later sewer connection was often added in a different material, and the two meet somewhere under the rear extension. A survey is the only way to know which of those you have before you sign.

The Housing Stock A Survey Has To Deal With

The pre-1930s stock is not the whole picture. Cavity-wall homes in the borough are typically from the 1930s onwards, and large parts of the borough were laid out as council and LCC estates in the interwar period: the Bellingham Estate was built in 1923 with 2,700 homes, the Downham Estate followed between 1924 and 1930, and the Grove Park estate between 1926 and 1929. The planned street layouts at Catford and Hither Green were being built out in the same period, with terraces and semi-detached houses gradually replacing earlier villas.

After the war came the Passfields estate at Daneswood Avenue in Catford, built between 1949 and 1950 and designed by Maxwell Fry and Jane Drew. Post-war estates tend to have shallower and shorter runs than the Victorian terraces, but they often share a junction or a manhole with a much older system further down the road.

The council's own view of its housing stock is worth weighing. The 2024-25 housing stock condition survey found that 24% of the council's homes failed the decency standard, and committee papers name the aging housing stock, with many pipes corroding and leading to leaks, as a major challenge. Those same papers record 3,069 damp and mould cases as at 15 September 2024. Corroded pipework is exactly what a camera sees and what a buyer cannot see any other way.

Getting Onto The Street In SE13 And SE6

A survey is a low-impact job, but we still need to reach the manhole or the soil pipe, and that often means a suspended parking bay. In Lewisham, bay suspensions have to be applied for at least five working days before the start date, and the council charges a £62 administration fee per application. A pay-to-park or shared-use bay costs £56 per bay per day, and a resident permit bay is a one-off £62. A suspension can run for up to six months, and anything longer needs a temporary traffic order.

There are no suspensions on Red Routes, so if your only access is on one, we plan the visit around the work rather than the parking. Suspended spaces are marked with yellow warning boards on the street, and neighbours do need to be told. The controlled parking zones that matter most for survey work in SE13 and SE6 are Catford West and Hither Green West, Monday to Friday 9am to 7pm; Deptford, Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm; Lee, Lee Green and Hither Green East, Monday to Friday 10am to noon; and Davids Road, Monday to Friday 9am to 5pm. Resident permit and pay-to-park bays inside those zones are exactly what a works vehicle displaces, so we confirm the parking position with you before we book.

What The Camera Actually Shows

The camera records the whole run and we log what it passes through: open or displaced joints, cracks, root ingress at the joints rather than through the pipe wall, encrustation on the invert, and the point where the pipe steps or falls away. A surveyor can tell you a drain is old. The camera can tell you which two metres of it need replacing, and where a new extension has been clipped onto a much older run.

If a drain is holding standing water the camera cannot see through it, so we usually jet the line clear first. That is worth knowing at booking, because it changes the price and the length of the visit.

Build-Over Agreements Before An Extension

Buyers in Lewisham are often extending at the same time as moving in, and a rear extension is where drainage problems become expensive. Thames Water requires a build-over agreement for building works within three metres of a public sewer or within one metre of a public lateral drain, and planning permission does not grant permission to build over a sewer. A minor diversion may be possible where the sewer is 150mm or less in internal diameter and the diversion is 20m or less, which is a fact worth knowing before the design is fixed.

The survey report gives you the pipe material, diameter, depth and route that a build-over application needs, so the same visit can serve both the purchase and the planning file. For more on the general process, see our CCTV drain survey service page.

What You Receive And What It Costs

You receive HD video of every run surveyed, a written report naming each defect with its location and severity, and a fixed price for any remedial work you decide you want. You are under no obligation to use us for the repair. If you are moving quickly, tell us your completion date at booking so the report lands while the sale is still live.

A domestic CCTV drain survey in Lewisham typically costs between £120 and £280. The price is agreed in full before the engineer arrives and there is no callout fee from the attending engineer, so the number you agree is the number you pay.

Last Updated: 23 September 2026