Have David Wilson Homes messed up in Thatcham? Options

[CrackerJack]

There's an interesting and worrying discussion going on for those that live there, over at the Kennet Heath Forum and on the Facebook page for the Kennet Heath Residents Association relating to a mess that David Wilson Homes seem to have left for many of the residents of the old MOD site to clear up. Someone has picked up that although most of the estate is adopted, some of the roads still aren't - several years after the place seemed completed.

In response to the initial post the website Admin posted the following

"I can confirm that the reply from west Berks council (when asked about a blanket 20mph limit for KH) the response was as follows...."

Further to my colleague Andrew Garratt’s E mail of today relating to a blanket 20 MPH limit for the Kennet Heath Development I have been asked to contact you with regards to the roads within the development that haven’t yet been adopted.
I can confirm that the following roads haven’t yet been adopted by West Berkshire Council :-

Yeomanry Close
Imperial Way
Connaught Gardens
Horne Road

The reason being the Developer, David Wilson Homes , is not yet in a position to hand them over for legal reasons and until this issue has been resolved by the Developer we are not able to accept these road despite them having been completed for a while now.

Regards

Another poster then submitted the following
"I've been in touch with the council about this. This is what they have had to say:"

The S38 Adoption agreement for this part of the Kennet Heath site has not been signed by the Developer or West Berkshire Council due to the fact the Developer has handed over an area of land to a private resident that is identified within the draft agreement as being future public highway.
Therefore we are unable to adopt these streets until this error has been resolved by the Developer.
This has been ongoing for a couple of years now and I am not sure when it is likely to be resolved. It is something we have no control over and is something the Developer must sort out himself.
The Developer did not enter into a Bond with us when we requested one when the site first started despite us pursuing him for one as he stated at the time there was no need for a separate Bond as a S38 agreement was going to be signed shortly. Therefore there isn’t a Bond attached to this site and there is nothing we can legally do to force him to enter into a Bond.

The Develop is David Wilson Homes and this site is dealt with by their Bristol Office and I can only suggest you contact them if you want any further information relating to when this issue will be resolved.

"They have also clarified:"

This part of the Kennet Heath development is known as Pod C and is one of several individual areas or Pods of Development within the Kennet Heath Estate.
Different Developers who were part of the original consortium each constructed their own houses within their own Pods and David Wilsons had several Pods including Pod C.
As each individual Pod went through its own planning approval and therefore had its own legal agreement requirements that is why these streets are affected by this issue within Pod C even though the problem is not actually within them all but elsewhere within the application area of Pod C.
I have attached a copy of the Pod C application area showing the complete area in question and the roads affected.
Therefore I am afraid we are unable to adopt any of the roads within Pod C unless we adopt all of them together.

A few days later this was posted
"I've got some more news. David Wilson Homes have now responded to my enquiries. Taken at face value their response has settled some of my fears, but it remains to be seen if they follow through. Here is what they said in their email to me:"

I would like to introduce myself, my name is Ryan Price and I have recently been employed by David Wilson Homes as Estate Completions Manager. Further to your email below I would like to inform you that I am tasked with concluding the outstanding issues relating to the roads and sewers and I am currently in dialogue with West Berks Council regarding the piece of land which is holding up the highway adoption.

In response to your queries I can respond with the following….

1. I am currently in dialogue with West Berks Council regarding their requirement for David Wilson to dedicate the 2 meter strip of verge in question, as Highway. I am currently challenging the requirement, however should this fail, I will need to approach the current resident and land owner with a view to buying the land back. This process was previously being dealt with by a predecessor, who was only employed part time and I am a full time resource, so I will be able to speed things up.
2. In terms of the time scales required to conclude this matter, this is very hard to predict. I am firstly trying to avoid a process whereby we need to purchase the land back, as this will no doubt prove to be costly, both financially and in terms of time scales. Whilst I am not currently in a good position to predict the exact time scales needed to resolve this particular issue, I can inform you that the Legal Agreement we have entered into with West Berks Council, allows for roads to be adopted in sections, which is something I will pursue.

Regarding your comment relating to ‘liability’ for the ‘roads and drains’, hopefully it should comfort you to know that under the terms of the legal agreement we have entered into with West Berks Council, it is David Wilson Homes who are liable for the roads and sewers and the residents, until such time as the roads are adopted.

I hope the above provides you with some satisfaction, and I should be able to provide you with more detailed feedback over the coming weeks.

Please feel free to contact me on the below number to discuss the matter further if you wish….

Promising. And then this posted today:
"Well unfortunately my initial optimism has now faded...
I wrote back to Mr Price asking for clarification regarding his statement that "it is David Wilson Homes who are liable for the roads and sewers and the residents". He replied with the following."

Sorry Mr ****, it was a typo… I meant to say, “it is David Wilson Homes who are liable for the roads and sewers and NOT the residents”. The Council holds a financial bond against my company to be used should we default in our responsibilities prior to the adoption, so you have no need to concern yourself over this.

"I was a little confused as WBCC had told me there was no bond in place, so I wrote back asking for further clarification. This is the response."

I must apologise as it appears I have misled you. It is of course due to the land ownership issues that we are yet to enter into an agreement with West Berks!! I had assumed that this agreement was in place…

Whilst this situation does present the residents with an element of risk, I can assure you that it is my task to ensure that the Roads & Sewers are adopted by the relevant Local Authorities in a timely manner. Having double checked the correspondence I have to hand, it appears that West Berks are unwilling to enter into an agreement with David Wilson, purely because we are unable to offer them the small areas of verge we have conveyed to a house owner in Imperial Way. It is my opinion that this is both unnecessary and unreasonable and as I have suggested, I am in dialogue with West Berks about this. I have a note on my file suggesting that both the Foul and Storm Sewers on the site were adopted in November 2014, however I will contact Thames Water to confirm this.

I am sorry for having confused this matter… In simple terms, David Wilson South West as a division of Barratt Homes are not going anywhere and we have made a commitment to ensure that this issue gets resolved in an appropriate manner.

It seems DWH sold too much land to property owners, or a single property owner, and because there is no service strip for part of the road, which leads onto other parts of the estate, WBC cannot adopt the roads in that area and until it is sorted DWH are still liable for repair, maintenance etc. In the meantime the street lighting bill on these 'private roads' is presumably being paid for from the public purse rather than from DWH.

If the resident doesn't want to sell, then the roads will not be adopted
If the resident realises what a strong position they are in they could charge DWH a fortune to buy back a tiny strip of land!

I have a close family friend who lives on the estate and is worried because there was talk that their bins would have to be wheeled all the way to the nearest public road and there's all sorts of rumours about needing to get housing insurance changed because they're now on a private road when they were previously told by the developer it was adopted.

I hope NWN picks this story up
Jack