Who enforces location of soakaways?

[Ferdinand]

A quick one.

 

A new Planning Permission has been passed which includes a soakaway for onsite surface water disposal.

 

Which body is responsible for enforcing the location of the soakaway being a sufficient distance from the boundary, and also the new building, in accordance with Council Policy?

 

Is this Planning or Building Control?

 

Cheers

 

Ferdinand

 

[PeterW]

Building Control

[Tin Soldier]

Definitely BC

[ProDave]

39 minutes ago, PeterW said:

Building Control

Except up here they show no interest in inspecting soakaways or any element of the drainage after the treatment plant, so as long as it's right on the drawings........

[Gone West]

For us BC were strict about distance from house but were happy about being next to boundary, but the boundary is next to an orchard in our case.

[Tin Soldier]

in my case they could see the massive hole I had dug for a 40 ton soakaway, so were fairly convinced I was following the plans

[dogman]

Our BC officer wanted 5m to building and 2.5 to boundary unless a building was other side of boundary in which case it was 5m from that building

 

they did check

[joe90]

When I built the garage first, the BC officer told me I needed a soakaway, I pointed out the solid yellow clay that existed just under the topsoil and told him there is no way it would work. I connected my French drain to a pipe out to a ditch in the road and he signed it off without question. I am hoping he does the same with the house as I did the same there. ?

[MikeSharp01]

22 minutes ago, joe90 said:

the BC officer told me I needed a soakaway, I pointed out the solid yellow clay that existed just under the topsoil and told him there is no way it would work. I connected my French drain to a pipe out to a ditch in the road and he signed it off without question. I am hoping he does the same with the house as I did the same there. 

Exactly our experiance as well.

[Tyke2]

It’s up to you really. But if the BCare  not happy they will be a pain. Normally it will be a planning condition that all SW will go to soakaway . As a developer you wound have to overcome the issue. As a self builder I have never seen a building go up and then not be allowed to connect to a drain. In my case I had similar clay, and built a soak away in any case. I only put one connection into it from half the main roof. The rest I piped into the existing combined drain. The soakaway has not caused any issue though. When in clay it is best to have a long narrow  trench  soakaway which may span over cracks in the clay etc and allow water to “soak away” even though the clay is pretty iimpermeable.

[Ferdinand]

Thanks.

 

This was the one that I objected to then had the thread hidden a few months ago, and now has conditional PP for a smaller development.

 

They came back and have resolved most of the issues after they lost the PP then the Appeal following my representations and the Council's view, including reducing from 2.5 to 1.5 storeys (33->26 ft) at the apex of the roof, 4 beds to 3 beds which reduced parking and amenity space requirements and made the PP implementable, and sorting out the parking mess they proposed. Not ideal or what they promised when they sold me my property, but acceptable in the circumstances.

 

It is still proposed to build over half of where my 2.5m wide currently unoccupied Easement runs, but the is non planning and the carrot is to negotiate that away in return for them pre-installing ducts for me, whilst the stick is a threat to install them myself across the full 2.5m width and potentially injuncting which will prevent the building of half of the 2 semis.

 

Time to have a conversation toe-to-toe and try to come to a win-win agreement.

 

Ferdinand

 

Edited September 19, 2018 by Ferdinand