Advice on moving overhead cables

[NailingPuns]

Hello, I have a property that has a low voltage electrical cable & telephone cable terminating on a part of my residential property. It then feeds to an old barn where my meter lives (used to be an old farm) then underground to my house. The final pole also carries an electrical cable underground to our neighbour, and an overhead cable for telecoms. 

 

 

One of the barn walls is slowly collapsing, and may take the meter with it. The other barn also needs tearing down, so I plan to replace both with a garage/workshop. I'm looking for advice on how best to achieve this without too much financial impact. The pole and underground cable servicing our neighbour is where I would also want to dig foundations. I've attached an image to this post. There are no wayleaves for either the electrical or telecoms cable. Openreach say they "would" have a wayleave agreement with the power company (none could be produced) and the right to fly wires. 

 

I've created a list of things I think need to happen ideally. I'm aware there are 3 people in play; UKPowerNetworks, Octopus, & an electrician. If possible I'd like to leverage the fact the meter is at risk, and no wayleaves are in place to reduce the cost.   

 

1. Move electrical meter to an external meter box before collapse of building
2. Replacement of terminating pole
3. Moving underground cable that services the neighbour and would be in the way of new building
4. Burial of cables from perhaps middle pole in a similar direction

 

 

[Nickfromwales]

My clients found a no win no fee agent who got their £11k quote down to £6k. His fee was 10 or 20% ( cant recall ) of the saved sum. 

[ProDave]

An issue I see. you are not supposed to build under overhead wires or even within 6 metres of them.  Existing buildings are okay because the rules were not in force then.

 

So you really need a pole right at the left hand side of your garden and underground everything from there.  Or even if the owner of the agricultural land agrees finish it at the first pole and underground from there.

 

There is a similar case going on here at a farm and SSEPN are refusing to replace a rotten pole in danger of falling over because it has "third party equipment" on it.  So I am not sure what extra complication having the telecoms on the same pole might create.

[NailingPuns]

Hi @ProDave apologies I could have been clearer, the poles actually belong to the power company. I also own the agricultural land, so movement not a problem. 
 

Given no way leave is in place, the pole and lines are within a close distance to the new building, I can’t see how the power company aren’t required to move these? From all my research my expectation is they should move to make them safe. 

[ProDave]

Start by calling the DNO, tell them about the building in danger of collapse and you want to rebuild but should not build under power lines, tell them about the no wayleave and then say you will grant a wayleave if they move them and underground part of it.

[Alan Ambrose]

>>> they should move to make them safe. 

 

The game the DNOs often play is 'yes we have to do it, we'll do it when we get round to it (expect 3 years)'. Usually you need it done quicker and you therefore end up paying for it.

 

You may get a better result if you're lucky, but you might want to get some back-stop cost estimates. If you achieve a final result better than those estimates, consider it a win.

 

Of course, if you have all the time in the world and a lawyer's mind you may eventually be able to get them to do it for free. For UKPN the two departments involved are 'Projects' who do the quotes and organise the work and 'Wayleaves' who deal with the legals.

 

If you can convince Wayleaves that your case has merit and urgency you may be able to get them to 'make a contribution' to the project cost as decided by Projects. You can save a bit of cost, of course, by doing some of the 'contestable' work e.g. trenching yourself.

 

The UKPN admin is BS and super-slow, but the engineers on the ground are usually friendly and reasonably sensible. Having said that, they did get a geezer to put safety barriers around the trenching work they were doing which was about 0.5m deep. This was in a field and only them (doing the work) and us (keeping an eye on it) were around. Anyone else there would have been trespassing. Be aware that they may bring up some last minute BS like road closures (yeah, UKPN you had about 6 months to think about that) and want to do a different cable route at the last minute. Again, they assume you want the work done pronto and are in no place to argue.