Blocked drain in leasehold flats

panchenlama

give them their nappies back

macman

panchenlama wrote: »

give them their nappies back

Indeed. The message from that would be clear in any language

retepetsir

keystone wrote: »

Oh dear I think you may have just cost yourselves 500 notes for nothing. Responsibility for shared private drains transferred to the water company from 1st October 2011. Your Managing Agent should know this. That they don't know it is incompetant. Giving you a number for Dynorod for the future is madness - in fact calling them in the first place was madness. Even before 1st Oct you should have contacted the Water Co and left the Managing Agent to argue with them afterwards about who pays.

In your situation never contact them again. Call your water/sewerage company.

Not very helpful for now but hopefiully for the future - sorry.

Cheers

As we had no emergency number we contacted Southern Water first (responsible for our sewers) who then called out Dynarod....they then had to call out another service with a bigger pump but we were told we needed to foot the bill up front as often they don't see the invoice getting paid.

If I talk to the managing agents they should then be able to get this money back from Southern Water surely? At no point did Southern Water say they were responsible.

I remember those changes were coming in to action but didn't think that they covered shared communal flats, only private housing?

Edit: Keystone - according to this animation (http://www.southernwater.co.uk/DomesticCustomers/sewerOwnershipChanges/filmflat.asp) that wouldn't have covered our situation as the drain access cover was within our property boundary, in the communal bin area. Would you agree?

The managing agents were also not contactable on the Saturday and no work would be completed until payment was promised. We couldn't let human waste and everything else keep overflowing all weekend, it wasn't very healthy.

keystone

Yes, sorry you could be right but it doesn't matter where the access point is what matters is where the blockage is (or was). If the blockage was in that part of the pipework that S Water are responsible for the they are responsible for clearing it.

So if I read this correctly you contacted Southern Water who subbed it out to Dynorod who then subbed it out to another party who made you pay? So who was your contract with? It sounds very much as though you were made to pay under duress to me.

Cheers

ormus

be a bit more direct.

retepetsir

keystone wrote: »

Yes, sorry you could be right but it doesn't matter where the access point is what matters is where the blockage is (or was). If the blockage was in that part of the pipework that S Water are responsible for the they are responsible for clearing it.

So if I read this correctly you contacted Southern Water who subbed it out to Dynorod who then subbed it out to another party who made you pay? So who was your contract with? It sounds very much as though you were made to pay under duress to me.

Cheers

I'm not 100% sure as the other guy was the one making the calls. I believe Southern attended but then said 'its not our fault', so then called Dynorod. They spent an hour on trying to remove the blockage but without success so they got another guy in which I assume was part of the same company, where the larger machine had a payment of £75 plus £50 per 30 minutes....total came to £518 with VAT. I stumped up some of the cash but didn't deal directly with the final invoice as I had to pop out. I'll speak to the other resident and see what else he knows.

It sounds like it'll be coming out of our maintenance budget either way, its just very annoying when its only one flat that has caused the issues. The mess was disgusting .

ormus - love that sign, I may print it out!

macman

IF SW attended and decided that it was not their responsibility, then they wouldn't call out Dynorod. That would be down to the property owner. They might well have suggested Dynorod though, since it's the first name that everyone thinks of.
What needs to be resolved here is exactly where the blockage was, and whose jurisdiction it comes under.
However if the property owners have employed a private contractor to carry out a job that should have been done by SW, then they're not going to refund the fee charged.

retepetsir

Ah well the other guy may have done so as we couldn't contact the property owner or managing agent...

The blockage appears to have been within the boundaries of the flats (car parking and garage area all within this), but the question was more about if its reasonable everyone having to pay, when it was one resident which caused the issue and hence the large bill.

macman

No, it's about calling out the right contractor dependent on where the fault lay.
At the end of the day you cannot possibly prove who caused the blockage, even if you have the strongest suspicions.

evoke

A couple of people have mentioned emergency callout numbers not being provided by management companies. This is not that unusual. Where I lived before we had an emergency callout number (which I had to use twice in 5 years, and the other flats residents also had to use it every now and then).

But, the management company removed this service without us knowing - they did a bit of a fiddle where they kept the service charges the same from one year to the next. but they dropped the cost of the emergency callout and hiked up their admin charges.

It's only when a few of us examined the breakdown of the service charges from the previous year did we notice this.

IMO management companies should be obliged to provide emergency cover as living in a block of flats increases the risk of a problem occuring.