Building over a Public Sewer - for information

fluffymuffy

A Public Sewer is now defined as one which serves more then one property, or belongs to another property but passes through yours. That would be one that carries next door's waste through your garden, whether or not you connect into it too.

To build within 3m (that's including your footings, not just where the wall's going), you will need permission from your local water company.

In our area, Severn Trent, this costs £169.50 for the application (form, plus drawings of proposed building work, plus section drawing through sewer - plus proposed measures to protect the existing sewer), which needs submitting with a CCTV footage and report to show the condition of the pipe. Then after the building work is completed they want another CCTV inspection and report. We have carried our several of these since the new rules came in last year and always get quotes for the CCTV work. They tend to cost about £150 per go.

That's £169.50 water board fee, plus £150 for the "before" survey and £150 for the "after" survey. Then there's the fee for whoever organising all this and producing drawings and protection proposals. I (architect) currently charge £200+

That's £670+ before we get to build anything. It all takes about a month.

Just had a call today where they'd already started the footings when the Building Inspector pointed this out to them. Just as well I'd mentioned it all in a letter some months ago.

I'm starting this thread because there's so much misinformation out there.

brewerdave

Just looking at the costs for a new conservatory on our property which would be built over a common sewer,now the responsibility of the local water co.
Has anyone got recent experiences of the process,particularly with Dwr Cymru ie costs,timescales etc


EDIT -Further Q - the "guidance" notes for Welsh Water talk about having to expose the pipework - is it the "norm" to just depend on CCTV? If not, then effectively you would have to start the building works BEFORE you know whether you have permission!

Dan-Dan

We have this issue , we have an exisitng structure though that need spulling down and replacing , pre dates to 1991 we think , so stuck with what to do....you cant get RETRO permission from Anglian Water.....so not sure where we stand

Katzen

What happens if you don't get approval? We have a sewer, serving our row of 3 houses, running along the back of the house and round the side to connect to a main pipe in the road. It currently has two man holes, one where the soil pipe connects and one where it turns the corner. The one for the soil pipe is already in the floor of an existing extension. We have plans to replace this extension put an extension across the back and down the side, over both manholes. We looked into re-routing the pipe but we can't get the 'fall' over the distance required. The builder suggests if we put sealed manhole covers in it will be fine but I don't think Severn Trent will approve this. Can they stop us building our extension?
I know it's risky as any blockage would lead to sewage leaking into our house but there are many reasons to believe this is highly unlikely so we are happy with it.

southcoastrgi

Katzen wrote: »

Can they stop us building our extension?

yes....................