Wednesday, March 31, 2010

Millfields Estate boo-boo?

Another residents meeting and I'm informed that all is underway to have the roads brought up to scratch and formally adopted by the council. That's the good part.

The bad part is that there are three different builders on the site which may mean three different contractors bringing in equipment to do the work.

The next bad part is that Severn Trent Water examined a part of the area and found that they'd used 6" pipes instead of 9" pipes for drainage. So at the same time as that area is being 'fixed' it needs to be dug up to get those replaced, which means more work and more time spent.

On a final note it seems there's a small legal hiccup in the transfer of a different area. Once repaired both the roads, pavements and verges will be handed over to the council; this is fine except that this one small verge apparently is already owned by the council. The builders in question thought it was included on their site as did the council, but examination prior to hand-over shows it doesn't.

'What's the big deal?' you might ask, if it was being turned over to the council anyway that just means you don't need to do anything. Ah no possibly due to the way the deal is structured or the need for a paper trail of adoption the council needs to have the land in question registered to the builders, and will then have it re-registered back to themselves.

Now I find it important to note that this isn't some fly-by-night build with someone sticking a big shed at the bottom of the garden or a huge extension on the back of their house. This is a full housing estate off a main road with specifications to include it as part of the ephemeral Relief Road and look at the problems with it.

If this is a typical example of what we get when the council are supposedly involved in the building process, what the hell are they doing?

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