Rights regarding access to drive if waterboard are digging up road

[tomasinatank]

The waterboard are replacing pipes and digging up the road in which i live. They have 5 or 6 seperate sites with holes at the moment and are close to doing the area atthe botton of my drive. I understand they need to do this but:

If they block access to my drive by digging a hole there do they have to provide me with alternative parking arrangements? There is no parking allowed on the opposite side of the until after 6pm and very limited parking on my side of the road. I do not want to have to drive around the area looking out a parking space and trailing a 2 year old and a 5 year old about and do not want to leave my car on the road overnight as this is when cars in the road have been damaged. I am most concerned that they will leave me without access to my drive over the weekend when they knock off at 4pm fri not to return until monday!
Do I have any rights in this matter?
Any help appreciated.

hi tomasinatank...

I THINK you have rights.... I am pretty sure access has to be maintained to properties for the majority of time (i.e. all times other than when they are actually working directly over your access and they have to give you notice of when this will be). Best thing would be to maintain polite contact and you will find they will usually be happy to stick a board over the hole for you evbery time they see you coming.

If you have problems, phone your local council and ask to speak to the Highways Department (and then the person responsible for statutory undertakers works on the highway - different councils have different names for this from NRSWA co-ordinator to Road Space Bookings co-ordinator to 'im or 'er in the corner, so if you ask for Highways, you will get there in the end.

Not6 actually sure that you do have rights. We arrived home on day last year to discover that the waterboard had completely blocked access to our house (even on foot). We had to go through a neighbours house and over the fence to get in the back of our house - range everyone and complained (contractors, waterboard, local council, etc) - no rights whatsoever, couldn't even get an apology from them.

range --????

rang

damn... I didn't read this until too late.... post me a message if you are still having the same problem on Monday and I will ring my "appropriate" friend.