Water Co's to be responsible for (sewer)pipes beneath houses

[JohnD]

Households across England and Wales will begin to receive legal notices within a fortnight telling them that water companies will soon be responsible for sewers beneath their properties – at an estimated cost to the industry of £4.2bn.

The companies – which will assume ownership of about 230,000km of private sewers, adding 74 per cent to the length of network they control – are to press the regulator for permission to pass the bill on to customers.

“If we spend a pound, we want a pound back,” said Tony Wray, chief executive of Severn Trent.

Industry insiders fear that, with much of the private sewer network crippled by chronic underinvestment, they remain in the dark about the true scale of the liabilities they are due to take on at the start of October. The ownership transfer of the sewers, whose total length would stretch around the equator almost six times, marks the biggest change in responsibility for sewerage services since the 1930s.

The forthcoming legal notices will come as a surprise to the many homeowners who are unaware that they are at present responsible for the maintenance of the pipe that connects their drain to the public sewer in the street.

But for others who have suffered from problems such as blocked drains – and the costly repairs that often follow – the mass ownership transfer will come as a welcome relief.

http://www.ft.com/cms/s/0/c0f848dc-9a8b-11e0-bab2-00144feab49a.html#ixzz1PnLC4Dow

 

[htgeng]

pity its a paid for article but I get the gist. Water bills are already more expensive than gas or electricity. This will give them an excuse to hike it even more to pay for their gold plated pensions. I was all for the privatisations, but water has been a big mistake.

A 'simple' solution to the water shortages we will have in the future would have been to have invest in a national grid for water. Individual privatised water companies put paid to that idea. Perhaps its all a cunning plan to increase migration to the north where the water is plentiful?

 

[Nige F]

I was all for the privatisations, but water has been a big mistake.

?

Thatcherism like the Curate`s egg - Good in parts

 

[DJM]

Having read a couple of those reports, it's not entirely clear what that means for the householder in the following circumstances

a) Blocked drain - do they call aaadrains-dyno-rods-r-us or the water company to get them cleared - and who pays for it?
b) housholders who have concerns the drains are failing as evidenced by suspected subsidence or root ingress etc. - How is that resolved, who pays and who is responsible for the collateral damage
c) House purchases - often drain checks are carried out and as a result price reductions negotiated to cover the cost of drain rectification work. If it's the water companies responsibiity who would pay for a drain survey and who would suffer the works.
d) General maintenance to house and grounds. A hundred year old house needs some work and owner thinks 100 year old drains may be worth replacing/repairing at the same time to prevent new drive/garden etc being dug up 6 months later. Who and how is the need for the drain repair assessed and who will do the work?

Has anybody seen more detailed plans and how this will actually be enacted? If it is a blanket water companies entire responsibility and illegal to repair a house drains outside of a specified contractor, then I would have expected more of a cry of anguish from the multitudes of aaadrains-dyno-rods-r-us companies.

 

[JohnD]

the water co's appear to be saying that if they have to spend a pound repairing sewers, they'll want someone to pay them back.

not clear yet how it will work, this might be a negotiating ploy.

 

[DJM]

I had a further look and found some more information on one of the utilities websites plus a nice diagram of the sewer expected ownership/responsibility

So in reality for properties where there is one foul drain to the sewer per house nothing really changes (except perhaps it falls in line with most other utilities where teh responsibility changes at the boundary of teh property).

The real changes are those houses where they have joint sewers.

 

[Onetap]

“If we spend a pound, we want a pound back,” said Tony Wray, chief executive of Severn Trent.

I'd interpret that as meaning that if they spend a pound, they will want £10 back.

I'm not sure how they got the right to assume ownership of privately owned drains on private land. They will, for example, be charging owners a fee for building over drains that they had owned. It is another compulsory intrusion of bureaucrats where they are not, in some cases, wanted. I don't know the reasoning behind this, but suspect it was instigated by the water companies and they will be making a lot of money from it.

 

[Nige F]

“If we spend a penny, we want a pound back,” said Tony Wray, chief executive of Severn Trent.

.

 

[Agile]

One of the proposed money making ideas for water cos was to put fibre optic cables along their water pipes.

Network Rail did that along rail lines but the gippos pulled them up to look for the copper!

Nat Grid do that along their power lines but the NFU wanted higher wayleave payments!

They were going to do the same thing along the canals too. Dony know if any were installed but their coverage was not very good.

Perhaps the water cos want to run optics along the sewers? Saves digging up the streets!

Tony

 

[Agile]

The i3 Group who were planning on offering fibre to the home (FTTH) with broadband speeds up to 100Mb by utilising the sewage systems in Bournemouth to make the deployment far cheaper than would be available by digging up roads.

In a statement sent to PC Pro the CEO of i3 Group, Elfed Thomas said:

“It is our opinion that Wessex Water has been short sighted in putting commercial demands above the opportunity to provide a low-cost fibre optic network that will deliver superfast broadband to their own customers.”

Ian Drury from Wessex Water said:

“The reason the project in Bournemouth didn’t move forward was because there were contractual problems. The technology methodology didn’t work for us, nor did the reward for placing the cables in the sewers.

We would certainly look at other proposals should they arise, if the terms and conditions are right for us. We haven’t ruled out putting fibre-optic cables in sewers.”

Elsewhere, Scottish Water have not had issues with allowing the use of their sewers for the laying of the fibre optic broadband cable by the i3 Group and in-fact say that it generates revenue along with the help and management and repair of pipes.

In the future we should not rule out the possibility that the government and Ofcom may rule that sewerage systems and BTs cable ducts are forced to be made to open up their access to allow others to utilise the infrastructure already there for the laying of fibre optic cables.