YORK’S sewers have been blocked more than 5,000 times in the past five years - with wet wipes flushed down the toilet revealed as the key culprit.

Yorkshire Water says the wipes are now causing more than twice as many blockages in the YO postcode area as the sewers’ traditional enemy ‘FOGS’ -fats, oils and greases.

But, it said other more bizarre items had also been found at times in York’s sewerage system, including nappies, toys, jewellery, false teeth and even prosthetic limbs and small Christmas trees.

Customer service manager Tom Phillips said wet wipes were being used nowadays for a whole range of purposes on top of changing babies’ nappies, including removing make-up and wiping down work surfaces and toilet seats.

He said many people simply might not realise that they didn’t bio-degrade like toilet paper when flushed down the toilet, and ended up getting caught on the sewage pipes and accumulating to create a dam.

He said: "Before the proliferation of wet wipes, FOGS would have been the main cause of blockages.

“But, of the approximate 5,700 blockages in York in the last five years, 15 per cent - equivalent to about 850 cases - were caused by wet wipes, compared with six per cent caused by FOGS.”

He said the rest of the blockages were caused by a mixture of silt, tree roots and sewer collapses, although there was also a growing problem posed by “posh” toilet paper - triple or even quadruple ply - which did not break down as well as traditional single or double ply paper.

Mr Phillips was speaking in the wake of a major sewer repair in Fishergate which was caused by a collapse and led to weeks of disruption for motorists after workers had to dig down five metres to get to the pipes. He said many blocked sewers could be resolved much more easily by blasting away the blockages with high-power jets of water working at a pressure of 3,000 psi.

When this did not shift the problem, a minicam was sent down into the sewers to find out what was the cause and a high pressure suction vacuum could be used to suck out the blockage.

He added that when raw sewage got through the system and reached the city’s sewage works at Naburn and Rawcliffe, it was screened to filter out anything larger than 6mm, including the wipes, nappies, toilet rolls and makeup pads. The offending items were sent down a chute, compacted and put into a skip.