Who is responsible for water leak 10m from our boundary on someone elses shingle drive.

themissingdigit

Hi all, i have googled  & I cant find the exact scenario answer on Anglian Water or on here (this seems the right forum?). My vulnerable mother has a water Stop Tap/ Meter located approx 100 feet from her boundary. Which is obviously wrong, as AW say that it will be on your boundary or close. The Stop Tap/ Meter supplies only her property but seems to be in the wrong place but suggests the leak will be her responsibility, but surely they should have put the ST/M in a different place. From what i can find it seems that if the ST/M was located where the leak is & was faulty / leaking then it would be Anglian Water responsibility , if the ST/M was inside her boundary its her responsibility.

I do apologise in advance  for my poor explanation below but here we go.

The ST/M is located 3 feet from a driveway in a public footpath. The address for the ST/M is different to that of the property & there is no access to her property from that road. It then goes in a straight line down a shared driveway. It travels approx 100 feet before entering her boundary, then approx 100 feet before entering her property. The leak is approx 20 feet from her bounday.

We did mean to question the location when we first located it, as  She & her husband only moved in 13 months ago after coming home from france in a rush for medical reasons .With covid , shielding, hospitalisation & more we somehow forgot about it until this leak. 

Any help appreciated
Thanks Paul

Aylesbury_Duck

What have AW said, or haven't you asked them yet?  If the leak is on "their" side of the meter, it's their responsibility anyway, so the concern over the position of the meter with respect to the boundary is moot.  Best get them out to establish things, the leak will need fixing, irrespective of whose responsibility it is.

Jenni_D

From the description, the leak is the client side of the ST/M but still outside of the client's property boundary. I can see why the OP has concerns about whose responsibility it would be to fix.

I agree that they* need to speak with AW - the longer this is left the more the parents will be charged (presumably) for water usage due to the leak.

* It is the parents that speak with AW, although they can initiate the contact then authorise their son/daughter to speak on their behalf.

elsien

The water companies used to have guidance about fixing the first repair on private land free. Not sure if that still stands and I haven’t saved the link I used but might be worth looking into. 

Plus ensuring the stop tap is in the right place.

themissingdigit

Thanks for the replies. As it's a slow leak we were just trying to establish a few things before contacting AW. We have now made contact just questioning the position of the stop tap and the distance between boundary. They said oh yes this is very unusual we will go away and look at it. The person looking into it it decided he didn't want to make the phone call back and the lady that did said it was our responsibility. A few more pieces of information were given and they are now sending a technician to site on Monday. She lives in a little cul de sac and everybody else's metres stop taps are in the cul-de-sac.
I will Google the guidance as suggested prior to the visit and updates on here after the visit just in case anybody else ever has this kind of issue.
If the driveway was a public driveway it would be Anglian waters responsibility so I can't quite understand how how it changes to our responsibility based on the distance.
Please excuse any gobbledygook as using Google Voice keyboard in a noisy factory.

ComicGeek

Sounds like a typical older AW installation on estates - we've got a very similar set up, whereby us and 2 other dwellings have our water meters in someone else's front garden, and then the water mains run through their garden, along a shared private driveway and into each dwelling. Ours was built about 30 years ago, but it's a very common set-up on estates so not as unusual as they may make out.

You should still have an isolation valve internal within the property though.

themissingdigit

ComicGeek said:

Sounds like a typical older AW installation on estates - we've got a very similar set up, whereby us and 2 other dwellings have our water meters in someone else's front garden, and then the water mains run through their garden, along a shared private driveway and into each dwelling. Ours was built about 30 years ago, but it's a very common set-up on estates so not as unusual as they may make out.

You should still have an isolation valve internal within the property though.

 It's not an estate. The tap is in a street of victorian houses & pipe goes between 2 of them up their shared drive. Mums bungalow is newer. It just seems a bit of an excessive distance & its a 2 min walk to get to it. The pipe goes in a straight line but its a U shaped walk.

ComicGeek

themissingdigit said:

ComicGeek said:

Sounds like a typical older AW installation on estates - we've got a very similar set up, whereby us and 2 other dwellings have our water meters in someone else's front garden, and then the water mains run through their garden, along a shared private driveway and into each dwelling. Ours was built about 30 years ago, but it's a very common set-up on estates so not as unusual as they may make out.

You should still have an isolation valve internal within the property though.

 It's not an estate. The tap is in a street of victorian houses & pipe goes between 2 of them up their shared drive. Mums bungalow is newer. It just seems a bit of an excessive distance & its a 2 min walk to get to it. The pipe goes in a straight line but its a U shaped walk.

The pipework is installed by the builder so takes the shortest and cheapest route, without any thought of consequences later. 

There might be something in the deeds about permission to excavate to repair services, there must have been some agreement with the owners of the shared drive to install it initially. It's quite specific in our deeds.

Distance shouldn't be an issue though - I've just finished a project where we had to run water mains 350-400m to 2 new houses without any issue. 

themissingdigit

ComicGeek said:

themissingdigit said:

ComicGeek said:

Sounds like a typical older AW installation on estates - we've got a very similar set up, whereby us and 2 other dwellings have our water meters in someone else's front garden, and then the water mains run through their garden, along a shared private driveway and into each dwelling. Ours was built about 30 years ago, but it's a very common set-up on estates so not as unusual as they may make out.

You should still have an isolation valve internal within the property though.

 It's not an estate. The tap is in a street of victorian houses & pipe goes between 2 of them up their shared drive. Mums bungalow is newer. It just seems a bit of an excessive distance & its a 2 min walk to get to it. The pipe goes in a straight line but its a U shaped walk.

The pipework is installed by the builder so takes the shortest and cheapest route, without any thought of consequences later. 

There might be something in the deeds about permission to excavate to repair services, there must have been some agreement with the owners of the shared drive to install it initially. It's quite specific in our deeds.

Distance shouldn't be an issue though - I've just finished a project where we had to run water mains 350-400m to 2 new houses without any issue. 

cheers. did you put the Stop Tap/Meter 400m away ? or on the property boundary? 

Manxman_in_exile

Wouldn't all this sort of stuff have been discovered by your parent's conveyancing solicitor when doing searches etc during purchase?  Or, as suggested above, be covered in the deeds?

I'm wondering if you might get a better range of views by posting on the House buying and selling board - it's not a consumer rights question.  (Not that I'm suggesting anything wrong with the replies you've had so far!  )

ComicGeek

themissingdigit said:

ComicGeek said:

themissingdigit said:

ComicGeek said:

Sounds like a typical older AW installation on estates - we've got a very similar set up, whereby us and 2 other dwellings have our water meters in someone else's front garden, and then the water mains run through their garden, along a shared private driveway and into each dwelling. Ours was built about 30 years ago, but it's a very common set-up on estates so not as unusual as they may make out.

You should still have an isolation valve internal within the property though.

 It's not an estate. The tap is in a street of victorian houses & pipe goes between 2 of them up their shared drive. Mums bungalow is newer. It just seems a bit of an excessive distance & its a 2 min walk to get to it. The pipe goes in a straight line but its a U shaped walk.

The pipework is installed by the builder so takes the shortest and cheapest route, without any thought of consequences later. 

There might be something in the deeds about permission to excavate to repair services, there must have been some agreement with the owners of the shared drive to install it initially. It's quite specific in our deeds.

Distance shouldn't be an issue though - I've just finished a project where we had to run water mains 350-400m to 2 new houses without any issue. 

cheers. did you put the Stop Tap/Meter 400m away ? or on the property boundary? 

The meter (with its isolation valve) was 400m away in the public pavement - there was then an internal stopcock within each property.