Neighbour dispute, they haven't even moved in yet..

[FrameyMcFrame]

We have new neighbours, they haven't moved in yet as they've been gutting the whole house and building a massive extension.

The water board have now contacted us saying there's a collapsed sewer pipe and they need to dig 1.5 meters deep in our garden to fix it.
The strange thing is that we have absolutely no problem with our service and the previous owners of next door did not have problems.

I'm guessing that the building works have damaged it.
I'd be happy to oblige but the hole is 3 meters long and begins at the base of the trunk of a mature cherry tree. I can't imagine the tree will survive having its roots cut through? But maybe I'm wrong.

IABU to just say no you can't do it? I don't understand why they need to dig up my garden when it's their pipes that have the problem.


A few weeks after we moved in, our neighbour's started having problems with their drains. They blamed us, as they'd never had a problem before we moved in. No building work, just moved in.

The cause was actually their tree roots (we have no trees). Apparently the set up of the drains meant we could only potentially cause a problem to our other neighbours, not them. They still blamed us though.

@wowfudge 'perhaps the neighbours haven't endeared themselves...' - But we don't even know that the pipe problem has anything to do with the new neighbours at all. They may have just come across a problem and reported it to the water board. A problem could have been reported by someone at the other end of the street, and the neighbour may not have know anything until the water board contacted them in the same way they did the OP!

@newrubylane - that's as maybe but so many pps have been really rude to the OP the point of my post was that I could understand her being hacked off that it was being proposed that her garden be dug up.

Thanks for all the replies. Yes we are downstream from the collapsed drain apparently, so it won't flood our house with sewage (sorry to disappoint)!
Yes the extension is huge, I'm not jealous but it's caused a lot of disruption to all neighbours. Including rubble piled on the street blocking the drain on the road, piles of rubble left for weeks on end eventually breaking through our fence at the front and the mess left over the Christmas period when everyone else is trying to make their houses look pretty over Xmas.

Sorry if that's drip feeding he whole story.., they seem lovely and we've got on fine despite this, so
Maybe the title was a misrepresentation

Try to look at it as a lucky escape. Fixing a collapsing pipe before it causes major problems is much better than only discovering there's a problem because sewage is running down the street or into your house or your neighbour's houses.

Water companies have statutory rights of entry, and have to pay statutory compensation/put right any damage. The statutory compensation is NOT a licence to print money, you have to prove what damage you've suffered and if none you may get a small inconvenience payment relative to the amount of land affected by the works (which sounds to be very little in your case).
The PP is right who says that the workmen who work for the water companies are usually very sensitive to the householders and careful.
Not sure if your pipe is covered by the statutory right of entry or not, but obviously it's in your interests to allow entry because the last thing you want is a sewage leak on your land/boundary. If it is, what you should have received from the water undertaker is a Statutory Notice of Entry.

If there's no statutory right, I'd have thought the neighbour could apply to enter your land to repair the sewer.
Water companies generally have very good customer services, so call them and find out more.
Complaints generally work wonders, because OFWAT can and does penalise them for every formal complaint so they bend over backwards to assist in first-level complaints (to stop them escalating to OFWAT)

Elvis is right.

You're just jealous in disguise, oh yes you are...

I’m in a boat with you Crimson, but you can add on the fact we didn’t see plans as the work started without planning consent.

7 months later we now live between 2 building sites that have had no homeowner on-site until the last month.

My friends tell me one day I’ll be able to laugh about it. My sense of humour has failed and I literally cannot speak to either set of neighbours because of they manner they’ve treated us. Giant pieces of masonry falling in our garden? Oops clumsy roofers (tinkly laugh).

There’s always a straw for every camels back. Rationally OP knows this work will need to happen. The fact it’s yet again at her inconvenience is that straw.

for you OP. Hope your tree makes it.

I hadn't thought that the tree could've damaged it, good point.

Tree, sewer etc were all in situ when i bought the house 7 years ago and no problems were revealed in the survey.

As I said before, the previous occupants didn't report any problems either.

Thanks TDSSNCOP
Sounds like you've been having an awful time

Oh I’ve never had MN flowers before,that’s made my day. Thank you Framey.

The water board dug up my garden for same reason and removed a tree . They let me choose a new tree and they paid for it and had it planted .

UnknownStuntman, I see what you did there 😂

I think it's a bit odd to say there wasn't problems before. Are you maybe under the impression things simply don't ever break? If the crack is at the base of a mature tree and not next to their property where the builders were working, I'd have to assume that the crack was down to the roots of the tree and their drains are backing up because of it.

I'd get that fixed. Because at some point it may impact you and it will be a heck of a lot more disruption if they need to dig the whole thing up.

I'm genuinely shocked you'd say no and leave your neighbours with no working sewage system. Who does that?

OP, trees grow. They may start off not being a problem and then become a problem. It's why people are advised not to grow certain trees in small gardens or at specific distances from a house, etc.

Pretty sure you don't have a choice.. even if it's due to the building works, it's broken and needs fixing. Doesn't sound like you're being asked to contribute money?

Yes, it's a pain in the arse but there can't exactly be sewerage leaking.

*sewage!

Well I hadn't even considered that the tree might've caused it so thanks.

The works are happening next Wednesday and I agreed to them before Xmas. It was just today that they finally showed me a picture of where they're digging and how close to the tree it is, I then started to doubt the whole thing.

They have said they'll return the garden to how it was but they did say that new grass doesn't do well at this time of year so we will have a patch of bare land until the weather warms up. There's nothing that can be done about this. If the tree is killed they won't be able to replace a 60 year old cherry as that's impossible.

Anyway thanks for all the posts.

The tree might survive its roots being cut - we had to cut through a load of roots at my last house to level the patio and the tree was fine.
They are quite resilient, but they also have a lifespan and don't live forever, 60 years is quite old for cherry I think, so maybe it would struggle to survive. I think our was a 15yo acer.

A couple of years ago I came home to a couple of inches of floating shit in my utility room not a pleasant task to clean that up.
Water board put cameras down and found a broken pipe under my neighbors driveway caused when a gatepost was put in through the pipe. They had only been moved in a couple of weeks when a large potion had to be dug up to replace the pipe.
They had no problem with sewage backing up as their waste joined the pipe further down so it was only the houses further up than the break who had shit floating around their gardens or in my case unity as my main access drain is in there. I had to replace all the flooring, clean and rewhitewash the walls and replace white goods.
And the person who had caused the damage with his new fence post got away Scot free as he had sold his house and moved abroad about a month previously. So digging a hole in your garden is a minor inconvenience for what could happen if left unprepared.

No the tree did not come down, although they trimmed it eventually to an inch of its life on their side. I was livid at the time, unfortunately I was dealing with their builders as they had moved out of the property. The same day I also caught them leaning ladders on the side of my house and made them move it off my property also in a less than polite way. I am a reasonable, nice neighbour, however they never had the good grace to once come round and apologise or warn about the work. The wall was not moved of course as I quickly opposed that, however it beggers belief how they thought they would get away with that in the first place. I have since moved and a friend suggested I write the word ' dicks ' in weedkiller on their front garden, I never got around to that. My elderly neighbour did make me laugh as she used to call him the ' cardboard cut out assassin '.

OP I'd be gutted about the tree. But it needs to be done, so I'm sorry and hope they can keep it for you x

@crimsonlake So they wanted to move the wall to take some of your garden?? What the actual fuck?

crimson I can absolutely believe it. I came home just before Christmas to find next doors roofers had cemented a neat line of ridge tiles down the edge of their roof tiles. Except they were cemented over a foot onto MY roof.

Today I’ve noticed their new bathroom’s soil pipe descends down 4 stories all the way down my house.

So the problem is you have to go and point out the problem. People don’t like having problems pointed out, so you become “that neighbour” for having the temerity to just live in your house.