PEOPLE have today been urged not to put cooking fat down their drains after it blocked the pipes in a village street and sent raw sewage into gardens.

Richard Cornwell

PEOPLE have today been urged not to put cooking fat down their drains after it blocked the pipes in a village street and sent raw sewage into gardens.

The problem left an awful smell and a dreadful mess in New Road, Trimley St Mary, as the sewage burst out of manholes.

Residents said it was not the first time there had been blocked drains in the street and were concerned about the state of the sewers in the village.

Householders in Chatsworth Crescent and Addington Road had also suffered problems with blocked sewerage pipes previously.

Resident Deidre Cornforth said: “This is the third or fourth time we have had this problem.

“Once they told us it was because people were putting fat down the drains and this was setting and causing blockages, and then another time someone dumped concrete in the drains,” she said.

“There is clearly something wrong with the drains in this area.”

“I cannot see how they can talk about building new houses in the Trimley villages unless things like the sewers are working properly.”

Families close to the affected drain found they could not use their toilets, baths or wash basins because sewage was backing up.

Although the blockage was in household waste pipes on private property, Anglian Water sent a team to take action because the sewage was running off a driveway and into the gutter and roadside drains.

A spokeswoman for Anglian Water said: “It may be only a little cooking fat which is poured down our sinks at any time but there are a lot of us and it all adds up - it solidifies in the drains and then blocks them causing a self-inflicted aggravated environmental nuisance which can affect quite a lot of people.”

She urged people to store their used cooking oil and take it to household waste sites for disposal and recycling as biofuels.