Comment: Vital to resolve homes wrangle

Apr 14 2008 liverpool Daily Post

THAT small matters can sometimes have very big consequences is borne out by the story we carry today, where a patch of Tarmac barely two metres square has become embroiled in a £1m Merseyside land dispute.

The small, triangular plot is significant because it could hold the key to solving hundreds of homes’ drainage problems, with residents living in £300,000 properties complaining about the smell of bad sewage rising from plug holes in their bathrooms.

Developer Morris Homes and water company United Utilities want to put the site on a permanent sewer system, rather than the current temporary set- up.

But the work can’t be done because a local landowner says the pipework would have to go under land he claims to own.

This has now led to a situation where Sefton councillors have voted to pursue a court injunction against Morris Homes for breaching building regulations by leaving the houses with inadequate drains.

Everyone knows that neighbourhood disputes are often the bitterest and most difficult to resolve, even (or especially) when they are over the most seemingly trivial matters. In this case, the man who claims to own the land, and the developers who want to put in the new sewage pipe, have been locked in an ownership dispute over the land in question for more than a decade.

It has now reached the kind of stalemate where sub-contractors are physically prevented from doing the work. Meanwhile, homeowners who are caught in the middle continue to suffer, which is why Sefton Council has now got involved in the dispute.

The court injunction, if granted, would require the developer to carry out the permanent connection, which Morris says would connect the drains of 200 of the development’s houses.

As always with long-running local dis- putes such as this, it behoves everyone to sort this matter out as soon as possible, and for common sense to prevail.