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Report your incidents

Find out how to report an incident at a reservoir.

Help us make reservoirs safer

Whilst being of benefit to society, dams also have the potential to cause great damage and loss of life. Although dam failure is very rare, we know that serious incidents do arise at UK reservoirs each year.

We have developed a system of post-incident reporting and investigation with Halcrow Group Ltd, which allows incidents at reservoirs to be recorded and reported on in a consistent manner. Lessons learnt from incidents are disseminated to the reservoir industry to further promote reservoir safety.

Annual Report: Post incident reporting for 2008

What to do if an incident occurs at your reservoir

If an incident occurs at your reservoir, contact your supervising engineer, if you have one, and they can advise you what to do next. If necessary contact the Environment Agency on:

  • Floodline - 0845 988 1188, or
  • Incident hotline - 0800 807 060

Both operate 24 hours a day, seven days a week.

As soon as possible after you have brought the incident under control we would like you to report it to our Reservoir Safety Team on 01392 442001 (during normal office hours). Please state your:

  • role in relation to the dam;
  • reservoir name (if known) and location;
  • name, address and contact telephone number.

We take down the initial details and may call you back at a later date to ask you to complete a post-incident report form.

Please send your completed form to:
The Reservoir Safety Team
Environment Agency
Manley House
Kestrel Way
Exeter
Devon
EX2 7LQ

Alternatively, if you would like to submit details of an incident electronically, please download and complete a post-incident report form and email it to us at reservoirs@environment-agency.gov.uk.

Our role as the enforcement authority for the Reservoirs Act 1975

Whilst we are also the enforcement authority for the Reservoirs Act 1975, we do not use information provided as part of post-incident reporting to instigate enforcement action under the Reservoirs Act 1975. Our aim is to ensure that information on incidents is gathered to inform learning and research.