I've been trying to find out some more details about our options too.
This is roughly what we have currently - showing approximate route of pipes - contact me if its wrong and I'll update it! Beach Road is on a tank supply elevated to boost pressure. The rest in purple is approx 3bar at the far end of Wall Street (measured at no.6).
Should we have a new main fitted, the pipework needs to go here....
- Lee Wick to Wall Street 1,694 metres (in Red)
- Wall Street main length 276 metres (in Lime Green)
- Beach Road main total length 872 metres (in Cyan)
(These figures and distances are approximate based on Google Earth measurements and assume a new pipe is installed down the edge of the roads).
As you can see, the red part is shared between both roads - and at 1.7km approx, is going to be pretty expensive, but relatively easy to dig, as only the section through the Farm bend is tarmacced - which will cost more to do.
For a new water main for Lee-Over-Sands to be successful, the key here is the amount of subscribers - as this reduces the installation cost significantly, as a single application is a quote for the water to go from Leewick farm, down the road and up to your house. During our meeting last Friday with Smith's Farms represented by Phillip Smith (the Landowner) - I did suggest that in addition to allowing us wayleave access for digging, perhaps to reduce their annual water costs, they could donate or contribute towards installation costs - as it could potentially lower their costs in years following massively. This wasn't offered to us as an option, so its down to the owners and residents themselves to foot the bill.
The more applicants, and people filling out the application forms, the lower this figure is potentially, as the main pipe cost is shared between applicants - Andy Haynes kindly gave me some info from 2002 when he last looked into this - if the water company does all the work, back then it was £55,000. This was a singular application obviously, which would have resulted in his own pipe just for "his property".
Other options back then were available, e.g. "you put in our own pipe yourself", via a suitable contracting firm - if he did this, then the connection price is just the water company finishing the job off at both "ends" and was £382 based on 2002 prices.
So back in 2002, for the water company to do the work, the fair solution would be to split the cost between 34 properties - resulting in a cost of £1617 per household.
Once we get a firm amount of subscribers, and an up to date water company quote, this can be calculated, and then we can investigate the possibility of lowering the price by hiring a sub-contractor to lay the pipe using a machine, this hopefully will be far cheaper than the water company's price - but we would still need to divide up the cost between us. Only a WIRS (Water Industry Registration Scheme) approved company can do this, and of course this would need to be to the spec decided by the water company, e.g. pipe diameter, type of pipe etc. https://central.veoliawater.co.uk/docs/policy-and-company-specific-requirements.pdf
How I see this working...
The only way I can ever see this working is for a parallel supply pipe to be laid down Wall Street as well as the existing one, as otherwise if the water company suddenly connects up to the existing pipe networks around the 2 roads and houses, suddenly everyone would have to be charged - and currently we have issues with some residents not wanting to outlay for this at all - who obviously won't return any forms or subscribe to it. Instead choosing to remain on the Smith's supply and fight termination in court if it ever happens.
The key issue then, for those of us who want to have a water company supply - if we do have to run our own street pipe and main is this "who owns the pipe". If the water company owns the pipe, then future residents or those residents who refuse to pay their share, could just ask for their own connections and get it at a lower price, for example just paying for a meter to be connected. So those original people who paid for the installation outlaying thousands of pounds get totally screwed.
This is something that Veolia's conditions don't cover us for - as once they supply the water they apply a term called "vesting" which means they insist on adopting the pipe in the long-term after the connection to their network is made.
If we can avoid this "vesting" as an option - my solution to the problem of a lack of fairness with regard to the infrastructure installation (new main) pipes is this - If the residents themselves retain ownership of the pipes themselves, then nobody else will be allowed to connect without "buy-in" to the scheme - this would then enable those original subscribers to "claw back" monies from new connections - and thereby everyone retains a fair and equal investment/share via funds as more residents connect up. So with each new user, those previous subscribers would get a fractional amount back each time.
The only snag I can think of with this is idea is, that as owners of the pipes, we would be subject to costs and liability of future pipe maintenance, repairs, and any compliance testing to Veolia's water standards.
So all this is useful to understand during the site engineer's visit, as we need to ask all these questions about our options.
As Carol said, lets see what happens when the Violea engineer does his site visit and explains the options to us. Then we can decide what to do - and get an idea about figures.
Get filling in forms guys - remember don't bother with the Anglian water one - just fill in the Violia one, and return it ASAP so Mr Ross Wellham can work out our options!
UPDATE:
After we spoke to Veolia's representative, we realised that Beach Road would need to still be supplied via a shared tank as is the current situation. This means my diagram of the new pipework route above is wrong... it would instead look like this...
As you can see from this, the existing yellow section would still be fed from the storage tank, and Beach Road would be on a shared supply with a meter on the feed to the tank - it would then be up to Beach Road residents to share an account with the water company and share the billing between themselves.
Obviously the supply still needs to come down the same route, so Beach Road residents would still need to share the costs of installation of the new supply pipe.
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