Unadopted road

[MyTealMentor]

Nice house, ~15 years old, ticks a lot of boxes for us. We've come to find out the road (cul de sac) it's on is unadopted/a private road. No service/management charges. Developer owns the road, planned to get it adopted but have not (although no Section 38 to suggest pursuing). Road is in good condition.

Original deed between developer and buyer has covenant effectively saying they're responsible and indemnifies buyer until adopted. But covenant doesn't transfer so this wouldn't apply to us (presumably still applies to some of the initial buyers still living there). Presumably if they did sell the road to someone else they could then enforce management/service fees.

Feeling very stuck/uncertain. Day to day I can imagine things would probably be fine. It's not clear if they've had to do any maintenance/repair in those 15 years. Likely these issues would only arise years later and/or when we come to resell. Suddenly we might be in no man's land with no recourse to push for any maintenance/repair.

hmm I work in this area and it’s quite common for road adoptions to take some time - I’ve known some take 15 years or more. I’d ask your solicitors to request information on what is being done to get the road adopted - the indemnity isn’t worth anything if the developer has since gone bust

I've been told there is no Section 38, which as I understand they'd need to get the road adopted. So it doesn't appear they're actively trying to get it adopted? It's one of the large housebuilders so bankruptcy should be unlikely. It's not clear if they've actually been maintaining anything since they built the development however, or whether they did in the first years and since not.

Run. Seriously if it doesnt affect you know it will when you come to sell. Also if the road is adopted I'd make sure you check the drainage as that may be unadopted too.

No s38 would suggest the developer given how long it’s been has no intention to ever get it adopted ….some mortgage companies get very nervous of this.
so it’s either an un adopted road in the sense that it will eventually be and has been built to an adoptable standard and it can be adopted without a s38 (there are other avenues with the local authority to do this) or it’s a private road therefore at some point you and the other residents will need to pay to maintain it.

It’s concerning the covenant is not transferable on sale - it’s highly likely after 15 years depending on the number of houses in the road that they’ve all been sold since and therefore the developer now has no legal requirement to maintain the road for the new residents ….

im currently working on a road adoption project - only 2 years since the development was completed - one small stretch of road with 12 housing fronting it has cost upwards of £100k - getting roads adopted is time consuming and you are basically at the mercy of the local authority who can practically have you rip it out and start again

There's in fact a few roads in that area that are owned by the developer (they've got a block of flats with an unadopted road for example). I've asked my solicitor if they're able to find out more in terms of what the plans are, but so far they've only been able to tell me there's the lack of S38.

It's a few dozen houses and from what I can tell on Rightmove/Zoopla perhaps a dozen of those houses are the original buyers with that covenant. Albeit my solicitor told me that if the developer sold the road to a management company then the covenant would be void, so either way they could "run away" from the problem.

I've tried contacting the developer and hopefully do hear back. I'd be more comforted if there were still plans (but why no S38?) to get the road adopt and why it still hasn't been or what the blocks are. I suspect they won't go into that level of detail with me.

We would get indemnity insurance for the adoption if the council "forced" it, so I wouldn't necessarily hate that option. But I'm not sure how it would work if only a few had the insurance and everyone else was forced to cough up £10k+, as you say.