Getting off shared water supply. Neighbour blocking works

notself

Hi everyone,

First time here. I saw some old questions about shared water supplies, hope this is OK.

I live in a block of terraced houses that share the same water supply. The main supply comes from the street to the house in other end of the block and then a shared pipe runs through the back gardens feeding into each house. I am in the last house of the block (end of terrace)

I'm in the process of getting my own dedicated supply and already paid for Thames Water to install a new connection and got my plumbers to lay my new pipe according to the regulations.

What's now left is for my plumbers to do the switch from the shared to the new supply. One of the requirements from Thames Water is that we need to disconnect in the junction to the previous house in the shared supply (so to not leave any "live" pipes).

The problem is that to do this, my plumber needs to get access to the neighbours' back garden to do the disconnection but my neighbour, being a royal pain in the rear, is not giving us permission. No matter how many reassurences we give them regarding the plumbers insurance and assessment, they keep blocking this.

So now I feel like I'm at a dead end and I'm unable to get off this shared supply. Does anyone have any experience dealing with this type of situations? Is there any way I can force the neighbour to allow me to do this work?

Thank you

[Deleted User]

Having a read of this article. You may need to pay for legal advice:

https://www.biscoes-law.co.uk/site/private-solicitors/dispute-resolution/property/neighbour-disputes/#:~:text=An%20easement%20is%20a%20right,known%20as%20the%20servient%20tenement).

notself

Thank you. I was hoping we wouldn't need to go through the legal route but it may be necessary. That link is useful to get the right terminology, thanks!

stuhse

I believe your pipe will be there through the right of an easement. Any easement gives you the right to maintain otherwise it is worthless.  What if your pipe was burst on his land ?  Its obvious he could not prevent you from repairing it.  

notself

Yes, I believe you may be right. I did check the info on the land register but it didn’t mention anything about easements. I’ll need to talk to a solicitor unfortunately