Dropping my own kerb

[puntloos]

My council wants to do an assessment visit to make sure I'm not doing something weird. Fair enough, but the actual work will be done within 12-14 weeks (!) and for 1m worth of kerb, 1500 GBP (!!)

 

Can I just do it myself? Options?

[garrymartin]

You can't do it yourself, unfortunately, and £1500 seems to be about average.

[Adsibob]

Welcome to the power of the mafia. You are lucky they aren’t imposing a traffic management survey on you.

i think I paid a total of about £8000 for all the fees, surveys and other bollox the council required. Total daylight robbery.

[Blooda]

You can do it yourself....  

You will probably need to employ a company registered with local highways authority.

You will need to apply and pay for a permit for the works.

You may need to provide a traffic management plan, apply for and pay for traffic management.

You may get the highways authority, coming round and taking core samples to ensure the make up and metalling is to the correct standard.

 

It is generally easier and cheaper to pay the council to do it. £1500 is around what we paid given a bit of inflation, a couple of years ago.

 

 

 

 

 

[puntloos]

thanks all, sigh, and this is only a small extension of an existing kerb drop.. 

[DevilDamo]

Do you have the relevant insurances to work in or on the highway?

[dpmiller]

Is it a busy road/ if it was done on a Sunday morning would anyone notice?

[Alan Ambrose]

To be convincing you would have to spray paint indecipherable markings in several colours, a week later put out plastic barriers, then traffic lights for elf and safety, noisily dig a hole on a Saturday morning at 7am, without any hearing protection and showing a deal of fat belly, leave it for several weeks, drop off some kerbstones and leave them for several weeks, place kerbstones badly and not even, sit in your van all day while it rains, and finish up 6 months later leaving a bunch of mess.

 

Efficiently doing it all in one day would only attract suspicion.

[ProDave]

Another self builder further down our road had the road crossing for services made by an unregistered builder, i.e did not have any form of street works permit.

 

He made a far far better job than Scottish Water who did mine and did have the right permits.   Just proves having a bit of paper proves nothing about actual competence.

[Canski]

1 hour ago, ProDave said:

He made a far far better job than Scottish Water who did mine and did have the right permits. 

Luckily I had severn trent do a masterclass in reinstatement

[Super_Paulie]

brings back great memories of when i had my kerb dropped by the council to the tune of £1200 if i recall. 2 weeks later here come Virgin Media and totally destroyed it while it was still green. When i complained to the foreman, "dont worry we will fix it", came back to this after work. Note the cement dust still on the gate from the initial work, literally days earlier.

[TerryE]

Quote

Dropping my own kerb

 

The point here is that the pavement is part of the public highway (if the way is adopted) and outside your curtilage, so it isn't your curb; it belongs to the local authority.  The LA will typically retain active control on any works done to their highways.   They will grant permission to do reasonable crossing works so long as the requester is willing to foot the bill, but they will want to cover admin costs, and limit execution of the work to one of their approved sub-contractors.  That's just how it works.

 

If you ignore the rules and do this work yourself, then you might get away with this, but you might also piss off the LA and be forced to foot the bill for any remediation work to restore to highway to its original condition.

[Adsibob]

2 minutes ago, TerryE said:

 

 

If you ignore the rules and do this work yourself, then you might get away with this, but you might also piss off the LA and be forced to foot the bill for any remediation work to restore to highway to its original condition.

You would also be committing a criminal offence. Not worth it in my view, unless your self-build is going so badly that you need new accommodation. I hear HM Prisons are fairly water tight.

[Super_Paulie]

guy round the corner from me has dumped a few shovels of concrete down the distance apart of the wheels on his car...

[joe90]

6 minutes ago, Super_Paulie said:

guy round the corner from me has dumped a few shovels of concrete down the distance apart of the wheels on his car...

So blocking the gutter 🤷‍♂️

[Super_Paulie]

1 minute ago, joe90 said:

So blocking the gutter 🤷‍♂️

thats up to him, i paid me monies!

[SteamyTea]

19 hours ago, Adsibob said:

I hear HM Prisons are fairly water tight.

Not in the shower block.