[ambriel]

Can they do this?


There's a ditch around two sides of our garden that drain our surface water into the harbour. Our house was originally on the foreshore but a new harbour was built in front of it by in-filling, and a pipe now runs from where the ditch ends and exits in the harbour wall.


We had a particularly wet winter this year and the ditch has silted-up so I've been going round digging it out. In one corner I found a lot of soil had been washed out and exposed the end of a plastic pipe, out of which was coming water. Clearly a lot of water has been coming down this as it wasn't visible last summer.

A bit of experimentation with a bucket of dyed water confirmed this was connected to a rainwater drain in the adjacent road.

My question is, can the council legally do this without an easement?

Anyone else encountered this situation?


I'll be talking to TEC Services next week about it but wanted to run it past the collective first.

[robert waddell]

well first good luck you will need it         we have a similar problem and councils are duty bound to clear the highways of water it is there method of doing so that causes the bother
at one time the road to the west of us was quite narrow old leyland tiger buses had to pass at specific points   then in the early seventies there were two major construction projects   with vast increase of lorries they had a code that the full wagon ran on the road with the empty ones running on the grass bank
the original road drainage ended up silted and buggerd   with the road being barreled and lying in water when it rains now councils think that farmers fieldsare there for diverting there piss poor road maintenance water onto we have had numerous confrontations over the years and given them various options to remedy but money is the big issue    they got there fingers burned years ago with a developer that had council connections spent thousands doing a road crossing when all that was required was a ditch cleaned    there is another field the drainage contractor was working on when he discovered the main drain was silted he just piped it out to the road  and now there is water constantly running on the road
the part of the road that affects me everytime they dug a hole through the dyke i filled it with concrete and stones so they could not dig that bit back out   which reminds me i have one to fill in this year
anyway as i said good luck from my experiences you will need it

[SallyintNorth]

I don't know, but one would think that without their having an easement, you would be completely within your rights to block up any pipe found bringing water onto your ground? 

[lachlanandmarcus]

Presumably then this is different to the right of landowners to discharge agricultural type water from boggy fields onto the fields lower lying than theirs?

[robert waddell]

no they don't have the right to discharge  farmers that is

[lachlanandmarcus]

didnt mean by drainpipes into ditches etc but just field drains underground, I always thought that was the normal practice (NB not being defensive as we are 'lower fields' :-))). I mean, it has to go downhill somewhere if there are no ditches.....
prob not directly relevant anyway to a more substantial pipe discharging to ditch scenario, dont mean to confuse the two.

[robert waddell]

the land drainage Scotland act covers both water from high ground and if and can work for you or against you  but only covers field drainage road drainage is not covered

[lachlanandmarcus]

ah that makes sense, and answers the question, thank you Robert! I thought it would be different with road drainage.
 

[robert waddell]

there will be a roads Scotland act or similar and that will cover drainage from the road   new drainage will include silt traps but if they don't have money to maintain them or empty them  they are not much use and in this case by ambriel it could be the previous owner that granted it  or allowed it to happen
if it is plastic it could have been done over 40 years ago or thereabout 

[ambriel]

Thanks for all the replies, folks. I will take it up with the council at some point.


The temptation, of course, is just to plug it with expanding foam and just bury it again but...

[jaykay]

Well.......

[Small Farmer]

We have a situation which has similarities with this.  The water pressure in the pipe will be low so can be blocked very easily but rather than use expanding foam (which will be an obvious intervention) some feed sacks stuffed into the pipe will do the same job but anonymously.


There's no point in getting into an argument with a local authority which has no money to do the job properly or even reverse its own illegal actions.

[ambriel]

True, but I do like pulling the tail of some of the monkeys at the council

[Small Farmer]

Ah, if you want to have some fun, that's different.   That's when you see just how not-joined-up councils can be. Each silo will disagree with each other.


Our situation is that


40 years ago the main road was widened, creating a vast area of tarmac which in certain conditions drains down our lane


30 years ago the owner lower down the lane re-routed the stream flowing through her garden and drained her meadows to form a fishery lake.


20 years ago another neighbour on the lane renovated his house and piped the surface water that ran down the lane.  He had written permission from the local councillor who was then the chairman.


10 years ago the farmer next up the stream improved his field drainage into the stream.


5 years ago the council cleared the almost impassable lane (it was a bridleway) removing tonnes of tree branches and silt.  It now gets used by maybe one person a day walking their dog.


Nothing went wrong with all this until the winter of 2010 when the lower house was flooded.  So they blamed it on the 50m of buried pipe in the lane and blocked it.  Problem solved.  Until the winter of 2011 when it flooded again, actually worse than before.


By clearing the lane the council created a  stream bed which has tipped the other actions into crisis.  That house was always wet, and the woodland around it was always saturated.  The owners had added a ton of superficial value by draining all the land but had left a time bomb waiting to explode.  Unusually though it is the same people who improved the land who are still living there.


The council is completely at sixes and sevens.   There is no affordable solution for them.

[ambriel]

I'm sure if it was me directing surface water onto council land they'd be down on me fast to fix it, whether I could afford to or not.


First route I'll take is to write to TEC Services telling them I've discovered they're draining onto my property and asking for a copy of the easement, if one exists, and take it from there.