'Sewage flooded my home - I'm worried it will happen again'
"It's mucky. You spot bits of loo paper inside it. It smells. And in it comes, into the house."
At his home in Bladon, Oxfordshire in November, Colin Fletcher woke up to the sight of raw sewage bubbling up from a sewer in his back garden.
"We were moving furniture upstairs as fast as we could," he said, as the mixture of rainwater and sewage entered the house. He and his wife had to move out for three months.
A Thames Water spokesperson said the company was trying to identify a resolution.
Mr Fletcher said the incident was partly caused by Thames Water blocking a wastewater overflow pipe that runs from his home into a small stream in his garden.
He said it meant after heavy rainfall, sewage in the pipe system overflowed from the sewer, mixing with rising water levels from the stream.
"We are looking at ways of stopping the stream flooding the house," he said.
"But we still have the problem that Thames Water are responsible for: that their sewer is inadequate, their pumping station is inadequate".
Mr Fletcher said he feared that without these issues being addressed, another deluge could lead to the same thing happening again.
"I have asked the question: when are they going to upgrade the pumping station - I've had no reply as yet".
A short drive away in Yarnton, Martin Johnson said collapsed piping under a roundabout near his home regularly caused his downstairs toilet to nearly overflow.
A tanker, intermittently parked at the nearby pub The Turnpike, is the only thing mitigating ongoing issues with the sewer system there.
"The root cause is that the pipes have collapsed, because they're so old.
"I'm the symptom [of the problem]. It's frustrating to be a consistent symptom of a problem they don't appear to be fixing."
Both Mr Fletcher and Mr Johnson have raised their cases with the Liberal Democrat MP for Bicester and Woodstock Calum Miller.
Speaking to the BBC, Mr Miller said the two cases showed that the UK's water system was "broken".
"I'm really frustrated that Thames Water are not taking these issues more seriously and doing much more to support their customers.
"They tell us that's the priority for them, but their actions don't seem to live up to that."
Mr Miller said his party were calling for a "single, new water regulator with real powers that would be responsible for water companies' economic and operational management."
A Thames Water spokesperson said: "We are aware of the concerns raised by both customers, and we are sorry for the impact sewer flooding has had on them, as we understand this can be upsetting.
"We have been actively investigating both separate complex matters, with the aim of identifying a resolution.
"We will continue to keep the customers and MP updated."
You can follow BBC Oxfordshire on Facebook, X (Twitter), or Instagram.
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