DEVELOPERS and flytippers are responsible for major damage to Canvey’s drains, according to Anglian Water.

The water company has revealed its staff have come across dozens of examples of illegal work, including gas mains, electricity cables and sewers being built though the middle of drains.

The botched work is thought to have added to flooding on the island, which left hundreds of residents homeless in July.

Tory councillor Ray Howard said the developers and flytippers responsible “should be ashamed of themselves”.

He has called for Anglian Water to take action and believes council planning officers must tighten up their control of future work.

Mr Howard said: “The agencies have to be more alert to what has gone on and have got to report what they see when they clean the drains. More research needs to be done when people apply to connect into the surface water drains.

“Hopefully, everyone will work together now. There was so much devastation caused by that storm and we need to make sure people don’t have to suffer like that again.

“Anglian Water and the other agencies have taken a lot of criticism, but some of the public and some developers should be ashamed of themselves for some of the things they have done.

“One of the botches was nothing more than a hosepipe into the public sewer. Nothing like that is going to work.”

Anglian Water is investigating flooding on the island, and has discovered numerous examples of faulty work thought to date back decades.

A spokesman said: “As our investigations on Canvey continue, we’re coming across a lot of cases where other infrastructure like pipes and cables have been laid in such a way they interfere with the flow of the drains and sewers.

“There have also been quite a few connections to the network that are illegal or inadequate, and that need to be put right.

“It’s not an exaggeration to say we’ve come across dozens of examples.

“We discovered one pipe had been replaced with another that was just one quarter the size of the original, which is going to restrict the flow of the drain.

“We’ve been working hard to repair these pipes and get them flowing at full capacity again, and that work continues.

“But builders, developers, or anyone else digging up the roads and pavements on Canvey, needs to be really careful not to interfere with the drainage network.”