Blocked drain - access point inside neighbours extention - who pays for their work?

[looneytune]

Will keep this as short as possible.........our blocked drained turned into a nightmare as (after some working out), it appears that the access point is in our neighbour's extention. Basically, this was outside in their back garden once upon a time but previous owners of their house had an extention put in OVER THE TOP of this access point. This has resulted in our neighbour's floor being ripped up to gain required access!

Anyway, £550 later our drain is unblocked, however they are now still working on the neighbour's house to give them something new there which will provide much easier access in the future. I believe this could take some time and it sounds like this work is being added to our invoice so god only knows what the total will be!!

My question is, should we legally have to pay for all this work? Also, they have a damaged floor - are we liable? They have said 'we'll sort something out with the invoice' but I want to get ahead of that and find out where we stand before agreeing to anything with the neighbours (who we get along with - or at least did until this! LOL).

Any advice?

TIA x

I would have thought that, as their extension was incorrectly built over the access point, then it's their responsibility. However, I know jackshit legally, so will be watching with interest to see some well-informed replies

Unfortunately not an expert here either but I would be laying the bill for all work apart from the actual unblocking firmly at your neighbours door. And they should be passing it direct to their architect IMO.

I guess in reality it depends on covenants etc for access etc and I would check this as a starting point.

I agree with Loonyrarionalist, though it's not my area of law. Sounds like it makes sense though. Check your deeds, and check with your water supplier about rights of access.

Surely the extension didnt conform to building regs as they should have re routed access to drains etc? Surely you should not have to fully foot the bill for this?

Why don't you try ringing the local town council planning department to see if they can give you advice from their legal dept. They were very helpful to me re my son's dodgy loft extension.

We built a new kitchen over an access point and we had to provide a 'manhole' - it's tiled to match the rest of the floor, and there's a fridge on top, you wouldn't know it was there, but there is still access to the drain and we had to do it!

There will be something in the deeds to your neighbour's property compelling them to provide access for the purpose of maintaining the drain.

I had a similar situation with my business, we own the building but the carpark belongs to the business behind. They re tarmacked it and covered over the manholes . After much faffing around by the drain company I was using trying to figure out where it was it had to be dug up.

I passed the bill for the tarmac, the extra time the drain company had spent and the cost of them using cctv to track the hole etc all on to the other business.

Thats what they get for doing a cheap job in the first place.

I don't know if that follows the legalities of the situation but no one questioned it when I marched poped round to give them the invoice.

Thanks for all the replies, I thought I'd come back and posted after my OP but clearly not (sorry). Anyway, after speaking with environmental health, it turns out that although the extention is over the access point and the neighbours didn't know about it, as it was built before the neighbours moved in 25 years ago, it's too long ago for them to take any action AND the neighbours are not legally liable for the drain problem, although of course morally should pay for some of it. We have now had confirmation from insurance company to say that the whole bill of £792.00 is covered and they will pay (less the £100 excess) which is a big relief. We're going to ask the neighbours to pay the excess for us as our premiums will end up going up at some point because of this. I'm sure they will be happy with that as they'd originally said 'we'll sort something, don't worry' and they are nice neighbours. They know the bill is near £800 so I'm sure they'll be happy with paying just £100. We just need to get over there when they're in over this weekend.

oreocrumbs - that's terrible, can't believe what some people do!!