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.


The think that surprises me also is that if I had 400 k to spend on a house and do the amount of work they did I would have picked a better spot. I knew the house well as my old neighbour lived there, but it was situated quite awkwardly from the front on a corner. It had a lovely garden, but again on a strange angle. By the time they built out there was not so much garden left and they had floor to ceiling enclosed glass windows. As it was south facing, the mistake they no doubt discovered was that they needed patio doors as the heat would be unbearable. My living room was also in the back and I had full length patio doors which needed to be constantly open in the Summer as you would roast. They also replaced a lovely 30 ft brick wall ( well it was nice old brick ) with wood fence panelling in the front. Widened their drive for four cars when they only had 2, it ended up looking like a parking lot, all that money spent and it looked awful from the front at least. I did get a bit of revenge as I used their skip quite a lot under the cover of darkness, I felt it was pay back time.

I'd be curious how much they actually added to the value of the house, crimson.

If your neighbours were building close to the sewage they would have had to have a build over agreement from the water company. It isn't easy to apply and costs the homeowner.
A camera survey pre and post building is often required.

Well they do say a house has a ceiling price when you compare other properties in the road, if that is the correct term. When mine sold it achieved the highest and it needed updating I would say. My buyers knocked it apart and moved in after 9 months, goodness knows how much they spent on top of what they had already paid. It is a residential area , all bungalows so people buying them were generally downsizing. Mine was 4 beds however including an attic conversion.

There's no dispute. A collapsed sewer has been discovered. Possibly caused by your tree. But no-one is talking about blame. It needs to be fixed. Let them.

Yep, previous owners where we are now helpfully left us with a collapsed/broken pipe under house (along with undeclared damp and a rotting window frame - they told surveyor they’d always been painted shut upstairs and stupid surveyor didn’t check). Hopefully it’ll all be done as swiftly as ours was and your tree survives

Apply for a Tree Preservation Order on the tree and put off any work until it’s done. They will have to protect the tree and go through the council before any work is done that will affect the tree.
It does mean you’ll have to go through the council to prune it.
I doubt a 60 year old tree will have done any damage to the pipes (in the words of my surveyor DP).

Widened their drive for four cars when they only had 2, it ended up looking like a parking lot

Mine block paved theirs - and the entire front garden (which is not small). It has brick planters across the front - looks like a municipal car park.

OP - I would ask more questions. You have already agreed to it, but usually the water companies are happy to explain stuff - hopefully they are not too busy after Christmas.

60 is very old for the types of cherry most commonly used in British gardens: usually, 40-45 years is about their limit - not that you want a mature tree dying, of course, but if it's really 60, it's exceeded its natural term, and it could be a blessing in disguise to have the waterboard covering the costs of removal etc

I had to have some dying (of old age) cherry trees removed last year - sad, as I'd planted them with my late DGM. But the (four figure) bill was better than having the dead bits come off in the wind and fall on the house/oil tank/fence

Id be sad about the tree but id rather any potential sewage leak was averted

When we had a massive water leak in the front garden it was our cherry tree to blame. Their roots are notorious for disclosing pipes

dislodging pipes

Well I hadn't even considered that the tree might've caused it so thanks
We had this problem. Our growing tree roots began to move the drain pipes. Fortunatley they also started to lift the slabs at surface and we realised what was happening and had the tree removed before any serious damge was done.

TSSDNCOP
They sound like a bunch of cowboys. Yet more mess to clear up.

If it's broken,it's broken.Unless you want a sewage leak (which would probably affect your tree anyway) it has to be done.
I'd ask again for them to clarify why it needs to be done in that spot-perhaps in writing and expressing any concerns regarding your tree & garden.I'd also ask what will be done to put the garden right afterwards.
I'm pretty sure as it's a sewer pipe & any leak could have potential environmental health impacts it would be compulsory in any case.
I wouldn't let it colour my judgement of the new neighbours .Itwouldn't be a great start for neighbourly relations

Firstly its more likely the tree has damaged it than the buikding works unkess the building works have been direxrly on top of it.
Sexomdly if you do refuse you are very likwly to end up with waterboard applying for an enforcement order and you may be made to face court costs for it. Even when you own your own property if any waterboard sewers or pipes or drains pass under it you have an obligation to allow them access. We had a similar issue, we have a memorial garden out back that my young son made when our dog died. The neighbouring property had blocked the drain from their aide but it had reaukted in a collapsed drain right under the memorial garden. We got scared about ruining it. They admittes they would have to take the whole garden up. But when it came to it they were realky good. They had a gardener come in an twmporarily repot the plants that where there then they pulled uo the gravel, and everything else, rinsed it though and even alowed my son to help them sieve the gravel etc. When they did put it back it looks bettwr than wver and they wven did us a niccw edging which we previoualy didnt have. I couldnt fault them. If your cherry tree is so old. Then Id let it try to recover. If it doesnt ask them to remove it later if it doesnt rwxover so you sont have the cost. Get them to sign an agreement that you would like the tree left to tey to survive but if it fails they will pay for it to be removed safely.

Don't think you can refuse a utility company access for repair/replacement. Sure they will tell you why and who reported it. Won't make much difference though, access to your property is needed whether you know all the details or not though thought someone would have explained it all when you were told the work was to be carried out. Hope the tree survives.

We had to pay for all our own drain works (we bought a wreck of a house). The overgrown, neglected garden had damaged many of the old clay waste pipes and it cost us ££££s to fix. I'd be grateful not to foot the bill tbh.

Do you have a party wall award in place for the works next door? Worth checking - if building works or foundation works are done within a certain limit of your boundary you can require a party wall award to be put in place which governs how the work is done near to your boundary. All done at the expense of the person doing the building works. There is lots of information on line about party wall awards.

Hate to say but there is a good chance the tree has damaged the pipe , then the building work has caused the damaged pipe to collapse so there is a good chance it was going to happen at some stage

I'd be grateful they weren't telling me I needed to pay for the repairs myself.

I had sewage leaking under my house. Caused by my neighbour's tree.
Neighbour wouldn't let anybody onto their land to do repairs.
My house started cracking and sliding down the hill.
Neighbour still wouldn't let anyone onto his land.
Took 4 years and a very expensive legal case (that I won) and £13K of repairs to my house.
It was very stressful.
All because of a tree.
I don't what the cause of the problem is in your case OP, but it is much better to get it sorted out sooner rather than later.
You can ask your home insurance company to survey the drains if you don't trust the neighbours and the water company.

We did work on our house and as the groundworkers were digging down they found a drain had broken between ours and the neighbouring property.
Our groundworkers repaired it and had to lift a slab on their side. They were furious and never spoke to us again even though we repaired a broken drain for them at our cost.
I never really understood why they got so upset.
If they've done a surveying and it's broken on your side and need to fix it I'd be delighted if I wasn't paying!

Firstly the water company do have rights to access to maintain their pipes.

It could be caused by the tree - when we bought we found the sewer had been partially squashed as the previous owners had planted a tree over it and the weight of the tree had damaged it as it was an older type of pipe.

The other reason may be that they need to do it from your side if that is where the public sewer is. They have to maintain public sewers. If the pipe in their garden is just for their property then it is only a public sewer from your side of the boundary which could be why they say they have to do it there.

UPDATE

they dug the hole, the pipe is not there so they've got their measurements wrong.

Hope the tree and my clematis survive.

Coming back tomorrow to dig another huge hole.

Whilst this was all going on the new neighbour thought it would be a good time to ask if we would consider having our Cypress cut down as it's blocking light into their garden... really insensitive timing.

The gardens are all south facing so our cypress cant be blocking much light?