[vc_row][vc_column width=”1/1″][vc_column_text]A judgment of the Supreme Court will be welcomed by all property developers, particularly those involved in large scale sites.
In Barratt Homes Ltd v Dwr Cymru Cyfyngedig (Welsh Water) the Supreme Court held that a sewerage undertaker had no power to refuse to allow a property developer to choose where to connect his private drain into a public sewer, even if connecting at that point would result in the mains sewer being overloaded.
Barratt Homes were constructing a development of 98 houses and a primary school on a site just outside a village in Monmouthshire. They constructed a foul drain to serve the development and notified Welsh Water that they wished to connect their drain to the mains sewer at a certain manhole close to the development.
Welsh Water said that connection at that point would overload the mains sewage system and offered an alternative connection at a manhole about 300 metres away.
The High Court agreed with Welsh Water but that decision was overturned by the Court of Appeal, whose judgment was upheld in a decision of the Supreme Court published on 14th December.
The President of the Supreme Court, Lord Phillips, said that the developer’s statutory right to connect to a public sewer was an absolute right, and that the sewerage undertaker could not refuse the connection on the ground that the additional waste would overload the sewage system. The burden of dealing with the consequences of the additional waste fell directly upon the sewerage undertaker and the consequent expense must be shared between those who pay sewerage charges.
This will come as welcome news to an industry that has been under siege for the last two years. Having acquired a stock of land when property prices were high, many developers are finding it hard to make a profit in the new climate and are having to fight for slender margins.
Web site content note: This is not legal advice; it is intended to provide information of general interest about current legal issues.[/vc_column_text][/vc_column][/vc_row]
