Adopting a street/estate

Baldytyke88

I have read about some private roads with houses and the street is owned by the houses, not the council.

I live on a council built estate, so the council look after the grassed areas and all the estate. I have read a new build estates where the house owners pay a fee for someone to look after the grassed areas.

Do councils prefer not to adopt streets and estates? It would seem that we all pay the same council tax, yet the council don't look after all the estates the same.

Are the other services such as streetlights and waterworks treated the same on each type of estate? Is this a new problem?

sheramber

Ct is based on the value of the property , not on what services you use. 

Section62

Baldytyke88 said:

I have read about some private roads with houses and the street is owned by the houses, not the council.

I live on a council built estate, so the council look after the grassed areas and all the estate. I have read a new build estates where the house owners pay a fee for someone to look after the grassed areas.

Do councils prefer not to adopt streets and estates? It would seem that we all pay the same council tax, yet the council don't look after all the estates the same.

Are the other services such as streetlights and waterworks treated the same on each type of estate? Is this a new problem?

It depends on the council, some still want to adopt, many would do anything to avoid adoption.

Developers are also quite happy to avoid having estate roads adopted - a cynic would note the revenue-raising opportunity of continuing to provide a service (or selling the rights to a management co) - but unadopted roads can be constructed at lower cost and using less land, so the developer can pack more homes in per hectare.

Whether or not the developer passes the saving on to homebuyers could be a topic for discussion, but in theory if a development has more homes per hectare and lower construction/legal/S106/S38 costs then the people buying newbuilds on this kind of estate make a saving on purchase price which may go some way to cover the ongoing maintenance costs.

In any event, many councils are doing next to no maintenance of highways and greenspaces they are responsible for, so there's no guarantee that adoption would give a better outcome than non-adoption.