Unadopted Road on Council Housing Estate

Bloomer

I am hoping to purchase an ex authority house. The searches have revealed that the property is on an unadopted road ( the Highways Authority have confirmed this) and no legal rights of way to it. My solicitor has advised that a Indeminity Insurance would resolve the the right of way issue. The seller has no knowledge of any arrangement in place to maintain it if repairs are needed in the future. I have been advised that another Indeminity Policy can cover this situation.
Also my solicitor has advised me not to contact The Local Authority as we would be putting them on notice to a potential legal issue and thereby we would be unable to take out an Indemnity Insurance.
My question has anybody has encountered or know of situations where a house sold by the Local Authority some 40 years ago can be situated on an adopted road. The whole area is a large estate with a mix of social housing and I presume private ( purchased as mine was after the Right to Buy.) Other roads are unadopted too. This will be the second selling of the house after it be bought from TLC and so it has now reared it's head. I am wondering if there had been an error in the initial paperwork. I appreciate that it is what it is now but out of curiosity asking the question.

davidmcn

Do you know if anyone has a title to the road? I have seen council estates where the road is "private" and owned by the council, even though in practice that still means it's the council who maintains it.

edgex

What do the deeds say about the road?

Are you sure it's ex-Council, & not ex an old Trust or something?
Is it obvious that the roads are private?
As for not contacting the Local Authority, where has the Highways Authority data come from in your searches?

Bloomer

davidmcn said:

Do you know if anyone has a title to the road? I have seen council estates where the road is "private" and owned by the council, even though in practice that still means it's the council who maintains it.

In the replies to standard enquiries to Local Authority it quotes:-
 The nearest maintainable road but that road doesn't access the unadopted road therefore irrelevant. But,the road needed to access mine is:- Mixed maintenance responsibility with multiple maintaining partners. I've checked on Find my Street also, on Local Council website says this where information sits. It's all very odd as the most of the roads which are linked to estate are maintained by the council.

tinytiddles

Our old house was ex-local Authority and to be honest we only found out that the road was unadopted when we sold (naive first time buyers!). The original conveyance just said that we would have to make a contribution to the Council housing department if any repairs were required, no repairs were ever needed and the road was in good nick so the buyer was happy.
I also work for a housing association where the boot is on the other foot and the reality is that it is VERY difficult to recover money from freeholders to the point where most times we just don’t bother when we repair paths and roads because the legal costs are usually more than the charge for the work.

Bloomer

edgex said:

What do the deeds say about the road?

Are you sure it's ex-Council, & not ex an old Trust or something?
Is it obvious that the roads are private?
As for not contacting the Local Authority, where has the Highways Authority data come from in your searches?

It was definitely sold by the District Council. The no road signage stating Private Road. Data from local Auth searches and Find My Street.

Section62

davidmcn said:

Do you know if anyone has a title to the road? I have seen council estates where the road is "private" and owned by the council, even though in practice that still means it's the council who maintains it.

Agreed.  In England at least it is fairly common to find council estates where the road network isn't adopted and are known internally to the council as "Estate Roads".  Typically the housing department responsible for them will contract maintenance work as-and-when to the highways department.  But typically being newly built with the estate in the golden era of municipal engineering, the road itself will be constructed to a very high standard for which minimal maintenance is required given the low volume of lowish speed traffic.

The only real practical difference is that not being public highway means the rules regarding traffic management and parking are different. Although again there are often arrangements made between the Housing and Highways departments for parking enforcement to be carried out on estate roads as if they were public highways.

Bloomer said:

Also my solicitor has advised me not to contact The Local Authority as we would be putting them on notice to a potential legal issue and thereby we would be unable to take out an Indemnity Insurance.

In a way this is unfortunate advice, as the Local Authority is possibly the one organisation that can unequivocally confirm the status of the roads and what this means to private residents living on the estate.

In my experience it is highly unusual for a council house to be sold without rights to use the estate roads. If this was an error made at the time the house was first sold to a private buyer then I'd be very surprised if the council weren't willing to confirm the same access rights for this property as for any other property on the estate.

Personally, if it was me I would be asking the solicitor in what way "Indemnity Insurance would resolve the the right of way issue" - if there is no right of access then as I understand things an insurance policy cannot grant you that right.  As the buyer I would want the situation resolved properly now, or else walk away.

If the roads were built and still owned by the council then this should really be one of the easiest type of 'no right of access' problem to resolve.

Bloomer said:

My question has anybody has encountered or know of situations where a house sold by the Local Authority some 40 years ago can be situated on an adopted road.

Council estates can have both adopted and unadopted roads, and both can exist in the same estate.  There are no hard and fast rules on this.