Dropped kerbs

EachPenny

Pa_Ja wrote: »

People in my old street paid someone to do it privately as the council were quoting silly money.
They're not exactly going to come knocking on your door if you doit by yourself.

No, they won't come knocking on your door. They'll just post a letter asking you to explain why unauthorised work has been carried out on the highway. If you are lucky they'll just charge you the cost of trial pits to make sure the work has been done to a reasonable standard. If you are unlucky you could end up with a criminal conviction.

If you have contacted them to ask for quotes and not taken them up on the offer then it is likely you will be added to the list of locations to be regularly inspected. The Council I worked for would keep you on that list for two years or so, if an inspector happened to be passing......

Furts

consumers_revenge wrote: »

In addition to the £58 and £158? the council want to agree in principal then get plans from utilities its then been quotes of roughly £950 and £1200!!!!

Thanks to competition, and council's loosing a monopoly over this work this represents superb value for money - so grab it while it is available. 30 years ago I knew folks paying a standard charge of £1000 for this work. Not many areas in life have experienced negative or nominal inflation over a period of 30 years+VAT.

The work is a bargain - go for it

Furts

Pa_Ja wrote: »

People in my old street paid someone to do it privately as the council were quoting silly money.
They're not exactly going to come knocking on your door if you doit by yourself.

One has to feel sorry for local authorities when this mind set exists. This is work being undertaken by unauthorised folks in a unregulated manner on somebody else's land. Let us be quite open here - the land is owned by the local authority. If this mindset then prevails where will it strike next? - cash in hand payments to dubious individuals to dig up neighbours drives, trim a bit of land off their boundary and such like?

There has to be respect for fellow human beings, there has to be decent standards, there has to be rules otherwise anarchy is a possible outcome.

Unfortunately there are home owners who give zero consideration to such matters. Selfishness and ignorance prevails and all they want is work done cheap, cheap, cheap and to hell with the consequences. It seems some of these folks used to live on Pa Ja's old street. The old saying is you cannot pick your neighbours and unfortunately for decent folks like Pa Ja such people do exist.

Understandably local authorities try to set barriers to prevent this mindset, which is why rules exist on installing drop kerbs.

keith969

consumers_revenge wrote: »

In addition to the £58 and £158? the council want to agree in principal then get plans from utilities its then been quotes of roughly £950 and £1200!!!!

That sounds about right. I had one done a year ago and it was £1200 plus a highways fee of £100 and a council fee of £45 to check the planning (which I already had).

Loanranger

I did have a highways inspector come to inspect my dropped kerb. Fortunately I had kept all the paperwork and was able to show him his own department's approval and the paid invoice when his own dept had done th work. I paid 1400 pounds about three years ago for quite a long run of dropped kerb.

EachPenny

Furts wrote: »

One has to feel sorry for local authorities when this mind set exists. This is work being undertaken by unauthorised folks in a unregulated manner on somebody else's land. Let us be quite open here - the land is owned by the local authority. If this mindset then prevails where will it strike next? - cash in hand payments to dubious individuals to dig up neighbours drives, trim a bit of land off their boundary and such like?

There has to be respect for fellow human beings, there has to be decent standards, there has to be rules otherwise anarchy is a possible outcome.

Completely agree. Also, it is not simply a case of carrying out work on someone else's land. The work is being done in a public environment with limited control over who comes into contact with the work being done. This is why I emphasised the importance of insurance and the CDM regs in an earlier post.

The householder employing the cheapest (because they don't follow the rules) contractor has no idea whether a blind pedestrian is going to be walking along the pavement and fall into the hole left by the contractor when they went for a fag break. The cheap contractor won't bother with traffic management and safe working areas, and won't have any interest in the safety of passing traffic. They themselves won't be interested in checking what utilities are in the ground they are digging up, until they hit a HV cable and turn themselves into carbon. All of the above are things which the unwary householder may make themselves culpable for if they employ the cheapest contractor and carry out work in the public domain without consent.

As an example (not in the area I worked in) a 'landscape' contractor was installing a driveway for someone. They used a mini-digger to clear the soil down to formation level loading it into a dumper. The digger was positioned on the road, with only a couple of traffic cones as 'traffic management'. The digger driver found it awkward to slew left to load the dumper, so started to slew right, even though that meant the arm and bucket of the digger were crossing over the 'live' carriageway. There was of course no banksman.

All was fine until a motorcycle passed by, the rider suddenly seeing a digger bucket appearing in front of him at head height. The consequences for the rider are predictable, the consequences for the householder could have been a manslaughter charge.

How many householders would have been aware the contractor was doing something dangerous? How many would have gone outside and stopped them working? And how many would even have been aware that they themselves could be held jointly liable for the actions of others?

People think that building a crossover is exactly the same as building a driveway and therefore anyone can and should be able to do it. The reality is building a crossover involves a whole range of hazards and risks that don't exist within someone's private land. Which is why - even from a selfish point of view - anyone getting any old contractor to do the work without the consent of the Council is frankly nuts.

Furts

EachPenny wrote: »

I emphasised the importance of insurance and the CDM regs in an earlier post.

I have almost given in on mentioning CDM regs. I have tried but at various times in the last six months somebody has come back suggesting it is nothing to do with the consumer. Attaching a link without stepping back and not doing joined up thinking. So it good to hear this pro CDM approach coming from another forum poster.

It is correct to say 99.99% of consumers have zero awareness of their legal duties under CDM and that is a truly scary statistic. I was in a straw poll about six months ago in a group of 25 at a self build housing event - I was the only person who had heard of the Regulations. The other 24 folks present were all researching, or undertaking some form of building - the mind boggles at this.

Perhaps you and I should take Pa Ja out for a meal and have a quiet chat with them?

EachPenny

Furts wrote: »

I have almost given in on mentioning CDM regs. I have tried but at various times in the last six months somebody has come back suggesting it is nothing to do with the consumer. Attaching a link without stepping back and not doing joined up thinking. So it good to hear this pro CDM approach coming from another forum poster.

People don't give a monkeys about H&S until things go wrong. Then they hope ignorance will save them. I was working professionally when CDM first came in - it was a wake up call.

I find the best way of illustrating the problem is to give examples - hence the one above. Although not related to the subject of dropped kerbs, another one I came across recently involved some amateur asbestos removal. The case was a few years ago now, but the message is still relevant:-
https://www.gazettelive.co.uk/news/social-club-fined-2k-after-8491053

Always happy to spread the message that CDM isn't something householders can ignore.