About Drains Cleared

What we do

Drains Cleared operates a nationwide network of drainage and plumbing engineers across England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland. As a result, when you contact us, we identify the nearest available vetted engineer for your job. Furthermore, we confirm their ETA before your call ends.

We cover over 800 towns and cities across the UK, with engineers available 24 hours a day for genuine emergencies. Additionally, planned work — CCTV surveys, powerflush, pipe relining, drain maintenance contracts — fits around your schedule. There's no pressure to book a same-day slot if your situation allows more flexibility.

How it works

However complex your problem sounds when you describe it, the path through us is short. Specifically, the same five-step flow applies whether the job is a quick rod-clearing or a full pipe excavation. As a result, you always know where you are in the process.

1. Request your free quote. Tell us your location and the problem using the quote form.
2. We find your nearest engineer. We match you with a vetted engineer covering your postcode.
3. We confirm your ETA before the call ends. You know when your engineer is arriving before you hang up.
4. Fixed-price quote before work starts. Your engineer diagnoses the problem and quotes a fixed price. You only proceed if you're happy.
5. Guaranteed work. All work comes with a written guarantee. Same fault returns within the guarantee period, we come back free.

Furthermore, you receive a fixed price before any work begins. The only cost you risk is the call-out fee — and we tell you that figure before the call ends.

Why not a local sole trader?

Local sole traders are often excellent, but availability is unreliable — particularly for emergencies. Our network gives you the speed and reach of a national operation. You also get local engineers who know your area's pipe layout, water hardness, and common fault patterns. In practice, this means a faster response than calling around local tradespeople, without losing quality. Furthermore, because we pre-vet every engineer on the network, you don't have to take a chance on someone unfamiliar.

We are transparent about our model: we are not a single company with one set of vans. Instead, we run a managed network of vetted contractors, and we check every engineer for qualifications, insurance, and work standards before they join. That said, you deal with us for booking, pricing, and any aftercare — the engineer handles the work, and we handle everything else.

How we vet every engineer

Vetting is the part of our model we're most often asked about, so here is exactly what it involves. Before an engineer takes a single job through the network, we verify their identity against photographic ID, confirm their trade qualifications (NVQ Level 2 or 3 in plumbing for plumbing work; manufacturer and industry training for jetting and CCTV equipment), and check that their public liability insurance is current and at least £2 million. Gas work is only ever allocated to Gas Safe registered engineers, and water regulations work to WRAS-competent ones.

Vetting doesn't stop at onboarding. Insurance and registrations are re-checked at renewal, and every engineer's completed jobs are monitored for guarantee callbacks. An engineer whose work generates repeat guarantee claims is removed from dispatch until the cause is resolved — and removed from the network entirely if standards don't recover.

Standards our engineers work to

• Drainage work follows the guidance in BS EN 752 (drain and sewer systems outside buildings) and water-authority requirements for work near public sewers.
• CCTV surveys are reported to the WRc-aligned defect coding used by lenders and insurers, so a pre-purchase survey from us is accepted where it matters.
• Plumbing repairs comply with the Water Supply (Water Fittings) Regulations 1999, with WRAS-approved fittings used throughout.
• Heating work such as powerflushing follows BS 7593 best practice, including inhibitor dosing and system filtration on completion.