As the month of Unblocktober continues, Anglian Water is back with some eyebrow-raising discoveries from the sewers. This year’s finds include basketballs, footballs and tennis balls, as well as some surprising DIY equipment.

While the flushing of wet wipes and sanitary products are still the biggest causes of preventable blockages that can result in flooding of homes and pollution in the environment, the water company’s sewer maintenance teams regularly come across things that leave them bewildered.

Other strange items found in the network this year included a saw and screwdriver - tools are to be kept in the toolbox, not in the drains.

So far this year, 2,862 tonnes of unflushable items have been wrongly disposed of, leading to Anglian Water clearing 13,565 preventable blockages.

Regan Harris from Anglian Water said: “Our teams work hard to find and fix blockages on our sewer network each and every day. We have enough sewer pipe in our region to go around the world twice, meaning our engineers remove an avoidable blockage nearly every five minutes in a bid to keep our sewers flowing, protecting the environment and our customers’ homes from flooding.

"Research by Water UK has found that non-flushable wet wipes make up around 75% of sewer blockages - these wipes are not designed to be flushed.

Regan added: “Although some of the things we find down the sewer can be comical, this is the reality of what our teams face every day, and it’s putting our beloved environment and homes at unnecessary risk. That’s why we urge everyone to not put anything down the toilet other than pee, poo and (toilet) paper.

"You wouldn’t use your bin as a toilet, so please don’t use your toilet as a bin.”