Problesm with private sewers, the developer and the council

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Hi All

We've had a problem with the sewers since around 2 years ago. This has a bit of a history, but here goes:

We live on a 200 year old converted army barracks. When the MOD moved out, a developer bought the entire site. They sold off 4 of the original buildings and we live in one of them.

The site is not finished yet, but the entire site - roads, footpaths etc is to be adopted by the council EXCEPT the road outside our house. Underneath the road is the old victorian sewer which travels up toward the front gate and the last bit of the sewer travels under a future adopted road.

This plan shows what will be adopted and what will stay private:

View media item 2377
A couple of years ago, the developer connected around 90 new builds onto the original sewer and then the problems started. Our sewers are combined, so surface water and sewage all travels down the same pipes.

Since then we have been having problems with backflow. Our neighbour has a moat, and has found raw sewage fed back out the rain exit paricularly when it rains. In our back garden we have a 10 foot sewage shaft. It keeps blocking, but at the FAR side of the U-bend, which I assume is the backflow problem. Last time I went down, there were sewage stains 3 foot up the wall. That's quite a backflow!

The problem I think, is a bellied pipe at the gate. I know this 'cos I saw dyno-rod try and camera it. They couldn't do this as it's holding too much water to camera it. The camera just dissapears underneath the water. The dyno-rod guy explained that if it hold water, it will collect debris and cause the backflow.

The developer is useless. He just agrees anything to get rid of you and does nothing. The council are just as useless. They spend more time fobbing you off than dealing with the problems.

The new threat is the developer has almost finished the next phase and is about to connect 40 more residences to it. You can guess the rest.

Building control tell me they can't stop the developer making a connection, but can withhold completion certificates, but I think it will be too late then. It will all get forgotten again and the council will 'mistakenly' award the certs.

If anyone has any suggestions I'd be very grateful.

Sorry this post is so long!

Cheers

Steve
 
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try the enviromental health see what they can do about it. also local mp and plnning authoroty
 
The plan means nothing without you telling us where you live and where this blockage is.

Why doesn't no. 66 have any connection?

Tony
 
Hi

We've been chasing environmental health, planning and building control in the council to get the drains officially CCTV'd for years now. Everyone talks a lot, no-one does anything.

What I'm trying to find out, is who's responsible for different parts of the sewers. I assume as the adoptable parts have not been handed over to the council yet, everything is still private and owned by the developer?

Hi again Tony

You get around a bit :)

We live at No. 67 and the blockage has now been cleared by me (again!) and keeps re-occuring in our garden at MHC5. One of the problems I think is our old sewers are lower than the new ones, so we have the deep joy of being the lowest point.

I read one of your old posts where you had advised the council on the law on ownership of pre-1937 sewers and this peaked my interest! Nobody seems to know who owns what. As far as I know, the sewers have never been 'handed over' to us.

Cheers

Steve
 
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Isn't it the local water authority, not the council, who deals with this ?
 
I tried them too. They say it's a private sewer and they aren't interested. I tried the pre-1937 chat, but they said they only have to consider adoption and would require they were bought up to standard first.

Surely it must be documented somewhere who owns them?

Cheers

Steve
 
I tried them too. They say it's a private sewer and they aren't interested. I tried the pre-1937 chat, but they said they only have to consider adoption and would require they were bought up to standard first.

Surely it must be documented somewhere who owns them?

Cheers

Steve

Obviously the site developer owns them to be able to connect and extend for future development.
 
I tried them too. They say it's a private sewer and they aren't interested. I tried the pre-1937 chat, but they said they only have to consider adoption and would require they were bought up to standard first.

Cheers

Steve

My understanding is that its not a question of them adopting the sewers.

Its a simple case that they have a duty to maintain and clear them if the relevant dates and any other conditione are fulfilled.

I asked Thames Water Customer Services about that once and the lovely lady immediately knew what I had been talking about.

Tony
 

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