Notification of Statutory Undertakers?

[Tracey Gardner]

I've just been told about an interesting situation.

The neighbour of my friend's sister is a builder and lives in a bungalow.

He is in the final stages of adding a single storey extension to the side of his property, the roof is on.

 

The gas board came to do some work in the road outside his bungalow, totally unconnected to his extension.

The gas board workers were shocked when they noticed his extension as he has built it over a high pressure gas main.

I understand that the builder claims that he had no knowledge of the location of this gas main.

However he has been told that he must demolish his extension and he is taking legal advice about challenging this.

 

The question that it raises in my mind is, in this case who was responsible for consulting the statutory authorities on this development?

If he required planning permission and made an application to his local council, then the local council as the planning authority had a responsibility to consult with numerous bodies including the statutory undertakers.

 

But if as I suspect, this extension fell with the relatively new permitted development rights, then the builder did not need to apply for planning permission but just needed to comply with building regs?

If this extension has been built under permitted development rights, then who is responsible for consulting the numerous bodies that the local council would have previously  done?

I can find nothing on the internet to cover this eventuality, but I presume that in the case of permitted development rights the responsibility must fall to the householder or their agent?

I did find a one-liner which said that the householder would have invalidated his house insurance by building over a gas main.

 

Has anybody got any thoughts or knowledge of a similar situation?

 

Many thanks

 

Tracey

 

[Dave Jones]

the person with most to lose in this situation is the owner, even if the extension is built under the radar when it comes to sell up a search reveals the gas main he wont be able to sell it, or rather if the purchases requires a mortgage they wont get one.

 

May get lucky with an indemnity policy but thats a roll of the dice.

[Mike]

2 hours ago, Dave Jones said:

when it comes to sell up a search reveals the gas main

That's surely how the current owner should have know that the main existed too. Not the sort of thing I'd forget that I had running under my garden.

[Temp]

Planning Permission is not a guarantee you can build the approved development. There can be a number of things that prevent you building what has been approved. I don't think the planners check you even own the land. They rely on you filling in the forms correctly regarding ownership. 

 

I'm a little surprised the builder didn't know about the gas main. When he purchased the bungalow his solicitor will have done searches and I think it should have shown up on those if not in the title deeds.

 

I've not used this site but perhaps worth bookmarking...

https://lsbud.co.uk/

[Tracey Gardner]

OK let's put a bit of a twist on this situation as I'm not getting answers to my question of when development takes place under permitted development rights, who is responsible for consulting the numerous bodies that the local council would have previously  done?

 

Let's say that the house was purchased 40 years ago by a married couple and the husband alone dealt with the house purchase.

The husband is now dead and the elderly widow wants to build a single storey extension to provide a ground floor bedroom and bathroom.

She would have no knowledge of any of the information that was made known to her husband by their solicitor at the time of purchase.

The extension is permissible under permitted development rights and she hands the design and build to a local builder.

So here again is the $64,000 question.

When development takes place under permitted development rights, who is responsible for consulting the numerous statutory bodies that the local council would do for an normal planning application?

[ProDave]

On 06/12/2021 at 10:15, Tracey Gardner said:

The neighbour of my friend's sister is a builder and lives in a bungalow.

He is in the final stages of adding a single storey extension to the side of his property, the roof is on.

In this case, as it appears the owner of the building is a builder, and he is building an extension to his own property.

 

You would have thought as a builder he would have done some checks on what was under the ground.  And as he is the owner, you would think he was astute enough to have noticed what was on the deeds, plans and searches when he bought it.  He does not sound like the widow who's husband bought the house 40 years ago.

 

A "I know a friend of a neighbour of a relative...." type discussions often turn out to be closer to home than originally described.  Is there more you want to tell us?

[Tracey Gardner]

Can we please ignore the fact that the guy in this case is a builder?

Nobody seems to want to answer my question, about whose responsibility is it to consult the statutory undertakers when building under permitted development rights?

There is no more that I want to tell anybody, as I said the case refers to my friend's sister's neighbour and that is my only connection with the situation.

It's the question of whose responsibility is it to consult the statutory undertakers when building under permitted development rights that interests me.

This particular case just brought the question to mind.

[markc]

1 hour ago, Tracey Gardner said:

Can we please ignore the fact that the guy in this case is a builder?

Nobody seems to want to answer my question, about whose responsibility is it to consult the statutory undertakers when building under permitted development rights?

There is no more that I want to tell anybody, as I said the case refers to my friend's sister's neighbour and that is my only connection with the situation.

It's the question of whose responsibility is it to consult the statutory undertakers when building under permitted development rights that interests me.

This particular case just brought the question to mind.

Why should it be anyone’s “responsibility” ?

loads of old services are buried in strange places, maps and plans only give a rough idea of pipe and cable locations. 
It is good practice to look around for access covers and man-holes etc. To get an idea of what could be buried but gas and water can run for many miles without any indication of their presence 

Edited December 8, 2021 by markc

[jamieled]

On 06/12/2021 at 10:15, Tracey Gardner said:

If he required planning permission and made an application to his local council, then the local council as the planning authority had a responsibility to consult with numerous bodies including the statutory undertakers.

 

Statutory undertakers are not the same as statutory consultees. In relation to a planning application, the council need only consult the statutory consultees and not the statutory undertakers. The list of statutory and non-statutory consultees is on the government website and gas utilities are not one of the consultees.

 

In relation to your original question, if it is a high pressure gas main (>7bar) then the developer (in this case the homeowner) should have consulted the gas network owner/operator. It is their fault if they don't. Although as noted above, there is a lot of cables and pipes in places not mapped, high pressure gas mains are generally known about. If the existence of the pipeline is noted on the house deeds/title then ignorance on the part of the developer is no excuse. If there truly is no record of the pipeline being there then I'm not sure where that leaves the developer.

 

More generally, it's worth distinguishing between matters of planning and other matters. Just because something is possible under permitted development or planning permission, doesn't mean there aren't other permissions required or aspects which could still stop development. These are not the councils responsibility, they are the responsibility of the developer.

[Buzz]

The responsibility to carry out due diligence sits with the person who has instructed the work. 

They can mitigate the risk by employing different profession's on their behalf to conduct various searches , surveys and tests before , during and after construction. 

But as @markchas mentioned above old service maps may not be 100% accurate and so may not have been picked up , but depending on what was brought and paid for they might be covered for such an eventuality. 

To answer your question directly, the builder . 

As understand it under PD the builder was not required to have all the searches and surveys done but is probably now wishing he did. 

 

[Mike]

2 hours ago, Tracey Gardner said:

whose responsibility is it to consult the statutory undertakers when building under permitted development rights?

It's the householder's responsibility to respect any easements that exist.

 

In terms of health & safety legislation  - the Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 - in a domestic situation it's the responsibility of the principal contractor to check out what lies beneath the ground, unless the principal designer has agreed to undertake responsibility.

 

As others have said, from the planning perspective there is no requirement.

Edited December 8, 2021 by Mike

[ProDave]

This us a useful document to read https://www.sgn.co.uk/sites/default/files/media-entities/documents/2019-11/Dig-Safely-Measures-to-avoid-injury-and-damage-to-gas-pipes-170503.pdf

[saveasteading]

3 hours ago, Tracey Gardner said:

nobody seems to want to answer my question, about whose responsibility is it

 

Patience please. We are none of us required to help you at all, and yet we are trying.

 

As above, it is the owner's responsibility unless this is formally delegated to a designer or the builder.

 

I have experience of this, when a client told us (as designer and contractor) that there were no services and we stupidly accepted this. Then we found a gas main and had to divert it around the new building at some cost. otherwise gas could leak in to the building and boom!

[Mr Punter]

4 hours ago, Tracey Gardner said:

Nobody seems to want to answer my question, about whose responsibility is it to consult the statutory undertakers when building under permitted development rights?

 

The landowner is responsible.  It may be that they can persuade the owner of the gas main to stump up some compensation, especially if the main is not shown on any asset plans and / or there is no wayleave in place.

[JohnMo]

If it's permitted development, who else is there but the land owner, they ultimately have the responsibility even if they pass the responsibility elsewhere.  The council cannot have responsibility, as they may not even know the development is being undertaken.  Even with full planning concent needed it still falls on the land owner, doesn't it ?

[saveasteading]

Just now, JohnMo said:

Even with full planning consent

Agreed this is nothing to do with the planners or building inspectors,. Entirely the landowner unless they are paying someone else to advise them.

For a single domestic supply the diversion will be a yellow plastic pipe in a trench round the building. £1,000 at a guess. Just possible that gas co may be sympathetic and give a discount. But if nobody made enquiries to them this is unlikely.

[SuperPav]

This is not a planning issue, and therefore neither planning permission nor permitted development has any relevance to this. This is to do with actual building work.

 

The situation is not really any different to you digging down in your garden and finding an unexploded nuclear bomb or buried asbestos that nobody knew was there. The ultimate responsibility lies with the owner, and the cost of rectifying the situation sits with the owner.

This is why before digging, you can run a simple search (through the aptly named Line Search Before U Build https://lsbud.co.uk/), which utilities respond to. It's free, and encouraged. To not have done it suggests at best a lack of care on the builder's part. The maps are not 100% correct, and old mains/lines aren't always well mapped, but this should have been done at a minimum.

In a hypothetical situation where the owner instructed a builder,  you'd have one potential option: depending on how the contract with the builder was worded, the owner might have a case against the builder for costs, but in this instance it doesn't help as the builder and owner is one and the same.

 

To answer what I think you're indirectly asking: neither the council, nor any of their usual statutory planning consultees are in any way responsible or liable for this. 

 

The only theoretical chance you've got is that if the building inspector has been out to inspect the footings, and could be *PROVEN* to have known about the main and not mentioned it, you'd have the chance of seeking redress from building control and their insurance.

However, it is highly unlikely you'd be able to prove that that the inspector knew it was there, and most likely they genuinely didn't. Your sister's neighbour builder would have as much chance as anyone else knowing it's there.