Thursday 11 February 2016

Developer delays

So as may have been noted from an earlier post of mine rollout of ultrafast broadband in my area is difficult due to unadopted roads.

This area has had a long history of issues between developers and council, as I suspect most do. The FTTC cabinet that serves the area is only there because the council adopted the road early after a bunch of wrangling with the developers concerned.

I'm beginning to understand their pain. This is from the section 38 agreement governing the road adoption process in my immediate area. The maintenance period is the 12 months between being provided a provisional certificate and the final adoption inspection.








Now I'm not a lawyer but this seems pretty clear. During the maintenance period keep the road to be adopted in good order and fix anything that you find wrong.

The below email from a developer seems to indicate they disagree:


Again I'm not a lawyer and could be, and indeed probably am, wrong, but I'm not sure that ignoring the defects until the inspector has highlighted them and rejected the road due to them is keeping to the paragraph in the agreement above. I would have thought that the developer should be doing a little more than just noting the defects, fixing them would've seemed to be more compliant.

I have, of course, brought this to the attention of the local authority. Because I'm nice like that.

I'm not holding my breath for the developer remedying the issues any time soon, which is bizarre as you'd have thought they'd be desperate to rid themselves of responsibility for roads, not drag the process out.

Input on why they'd do this welcome. The cynic in me says that they are hoping the highway inspector won't see all the issues they are aware of and they can save money on repairs, instead having the taxpayer pick up the tab post-adoption. That is just me being cynical, right?

1 comment:

  1. Nothing like the severity/impact/delays you're experiencing but I naively assumed that you voted the council in and paid your Council Tax and their Planning/Highways ensured all NRSWA licence holders/utility service providers/contractors had a seamless process to keep roads/pavements safe and in good order! Huh was I really that gullible?
    End April2015 I finally got agreement with neighbour for shared drive extention/kerb drop and hardstanding.

    May/June had drawn up prelim plans[*] and selected main contractor from 3 tenders.([*]Lesson to self - resist the urge to hands-on Project Manage in future but glad I put my MOD(N) Naval Base Development draughting skills from early 70's to some final constructive use before I die! :p )

    June applied for provisional planning permission from Brighton/Hove Highways and that's when I suddenly encountered the chaotic unstructured disjointed methodology of under budgeted, under resourced Council/Highways Planning.

    August after 3 modifications to my plans and 5 survey visits due to large tree, and other street furniture finally got Prelim approval for kerb/crossover etc and started Utility Search process. Got usual Gas/SSE/Water/Drainage plans/sign-off's within 4 weeks. VM National Plant Enquiries dragged their heels for nearly a further 3weeks.

    Sept2015 Fortunately I allready had VM AFM on the end of his mobile and had a quick survey done within 2 days as my cable drop "T" at my property boundary included my other neighbour's drop which traversed my property (no wayleave - tut tut). Rang his ST and got him onsite within an hour, temporary cable re-route done in 40mins! Left me 10m of green conduit for eventual cable repull.

    Late September final License from Council, Excavation started end of w/c 5th October, Kerb drop (done in 4 hrs!!) + Block paving construction finished 20October.

    2nd Nov and AFM had arranged his repull crew (excellent guys - many thanks) promptly repulled 75m from Street Cab via 3 pits and my 10m green worm (with nylon pull through) all connected and tested! Yeah!

    9th Nov Council Tree surgeons then decided that after 20yrs they ought to Top &Crown the tree - neat job but next door complaining that now the foliage had gone the street lamp was shining in their bedroom for first time in decades! :(

    20Dec: After Council Parking Enforcement had already towed 2 cars obstructing our new drive they finally painted the white line!.

    The asinine result of this protracted farce and 5 Highways/Aborologist surveyors: I have now a 4m width kerb drop with nice level tarmac but 1.5m away the tree roots have turned the public pavement into more cracked/lifted slabs.kerbs than I ever experienced driving a Mark8 Centurion over Bovington Tank training area back in my youth nearly half a century ago!!

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