Your responsibilities and rules to follow for watercourses on or near your property, and permissions you need to do work around them.
Find out if you own a watercourse
You normally own a stretch of watercourse:
- that runs on or under your land
- on the boundary of your land, up to its centre
The deeds for your property or land will tell you if this is not the case. Check your deeds if you’re not clear about ownership.
A watercourse can be any stream of water flowing:
- in a defined channel
- through an underground pipe or culvert (an underground structure that water can flow through)
It can be narrow or wide, natural or artificial. It includes channels that:
- are dry for long periods of time
- may not flow every year
A dry channel only filled during temporary flooding is not a watercourse.
A watercourse can be a:
- river
- brook
- beck
- ditch
- stream
- leat
- goyle
- rhyne
- culvert