Thursday, February 18, 2016

Lochloy sewers - will a developer come to the rescue or will it be down to residents to sort it?

There was a little discussion, last week on Wednesday night at River Community Council’s regular meeting in the URC hall, about the ongoing situation with Scottish Water and the sewers in the newer estates along Lochloy Road: the sewers up there have not been “vested” by the water authority yet. 

Speaking globally about the problems in the newer eastern suburb of the town the Chair John Hume said:

“I think planning permission was started in 2000 or 1999, there are no roads adopted, there are no sewers vested and there are no ground maintenance agreements in place or very few.”

John then continued: “In terms of Scottish Water which is what we are talking about tonight. They wrote back in response to an e-mail, they wrote back on the 9th of February to say that:”

“The SUDS, the surface water drains, etc, are not suitable for Scottish Water vesting, but the local developer and Scottish Water are in discussions with the roads department and it may be that they will adopt. If this is not the way ahead then the residents themselves would need to collectively undertake the work and apply for vesting.”

They then went on to say “subject to the roads being adopted and the developer making good the defects on the trunk sewers through the site (which appears to be all they have committed to ), Scottish Water would then vest the trunk sewers (conveying flow through the development from other developments). Given that this un-locks the next phase of their development it is hard to see why they would not agree to complete these remedial works.”

And point three. “This may leave some lateral foul sewers in the previous development in questionable ownership? Something that will need to be clarified with Scottish Water’s Customer Connections team . This again may fall to the residents to address but will depend on what the issues are. If the issues are small enough and SW were happy and had the necessary permissions to maintain and replace the foul sewer laterals within the development we would support their vesting.”

After John Hume had read the content of Scottish Water's e-mail there then followed some debate with Lochloy residents who were pursuing individually various lines of correspondence, FOI requests and complaints with Scottish Water and also to some extent Highland Council. 

John Hume indicated that there would be more discussion at the next meeting of the Community Council.

7 comments:

neil p said...

How on earth do the highland council keep approving more and more housing being built, if there are these sorts of problems, its utter incompetence and has been occurring at this development, since it inception!

Anonymous said...

I wonder who is to blame here for the seemingly endless problems such as these for development in the Lochloy area? Highland Council, solicitors, planners, building inspectors or Scottish Water or maybe all of them. I can certainly understand residents being very angry, they have in effect been sold short and may have to spend their own monies to sort the problems out. But someone must take ownership or responsibility for the mess? Surely there is some sort of audit trail that can be followed to identify which party/s are culpable

Anonymous said...

Don't we pay councillors to keep an eye on things for us?

Graisg said...

@anon 22.08 could you give references etc for that please.

Graisg said...

Hi anon. Thank you for that certainly problems facing you there. You will appreciate however that specifics have to be gathered and then responses asked for those specifics from the local authority. Take any information you have to a community council meeting is probably one way of proceeding. Anyway info@gurnurn.com

Development is a joke said...

Ok taking away 'specifics' because clearly you have to watch what is published, the fact of the matter is between the council and the developer it's a complete joke up there. Its a joke and I happy to to speak to anyone regarding the 'non material changes'

Graisg said...

Best go to the next Community Council meeting anon or speak to Highland Councillors, MSPs, etc, etc.