SSEN dug up driveway

Georges12

Advise please can SSEN dig up your driveway without your consent and just patch it. SSEN told me I have to like it or lump it because you have no rights, we have been taken to court before and no one has won yet in 20 years for working for SSEN! 

binny74

Oh yes!
- if that is what the court has ruled

Seek independant legal advice about appealing if you think the court decision is wrong, but if it has made the same decision numerous times previously, that will be hard. The law if often based on precedent.

Also if it was 20 years ago, forget any reasonable chance of appealing it now.

JamoLew

Water board dug up our front lawn a while ago with no prior knowledge/permission.
We would have happily allowed it with assurances in place.
Complained, got it fully repaired to our satisfaction and got a £50 credit
As long as your requests and expectations are/were reasonable they are fobbing you off big time - complain and keep complaining

jbuchanangb

They must have had a reason to dig up the drive. A year or so back I smelt gas in the street outside a certain property. I reported this to Cadent or whoever was doing gas pipes at the time. In pretty short order they had the driveway up and were doing a fair bit of work. The occupiers of the property were away at the time and came back after about a week to find their driveway dug up. I think most people would accept that utility companies should be allowed to dig up wherever they need to in case of an emergency. But equally once the job is done, the site should be reinstated to a good standard.

UnclaimedEnergy

If the drive is included as part of your property then go for it - even if they had an important reason to do this they should have made sure it was fully repaired etc.

Uxb1

...and just to add if the part they dug up was actually on your property and not on the frontage/kerb/verges outside of the front boundary of your land all of which are generally owned by the council: (unless it's a private road where it can be rather complicated.)

JC_Derby

Why would they have to replace your whole drive if they have only worked on a small bit of it?
as has been said they have access rights to their equipment within your driveway to maIntain/repair it. I believe it would be part of your agreement of having a service that feeds your property. If however it was a main that would be a little bit different.

You haven’t yet given any details as to why they have dug up your drive?