Social Distancing Guide

You could well be right there.  Due to the topography of the site, there were two obvious ways for the sewers to run. The favoured one was to pump the sewer to a convenient point to connect into the existing sewer which was overloaded. The planned location of the pumping station had an "exclusion zone " around it which intruded into the rear gardens of existing property and would exclude even existing constructions within those properties. This would make sale of those difficult. The other option was gravity; which is very reliable (well gravity is, perhaps not the way it is used) but this required laying pipes through existing property. What didn't help was that Welsh Water had drawn up a plan with a strong recommendation that the gravity option be used - they simply stated the connection point. Then their engineer went on maternity leave and somehow another plan was submitted by Welsh Water which lacked the connection detail. The refused application went to Appeal and this was granted Anyway, the required property which had been rented out for some time became vacant and then up for sale. It was bought by a mystery buyer which turned out to be the developer. Once the pipes were laid, they sold the bungalow. Welsh Water also determined that there were some pinch-points further away from the site and these were conditioned for the developer to pay the upgrade costs. Had they used the pumped rote, there would have been a few hundred metres of under sized pipework.


As an aside to all this, the 2,500 properties quoted came from my request to Welsh Water as to how many properties were connected to that sewer in 2004. They did NOT know, but told me to do what they do and count the properties on a plan. They then gave me a pile of A2 sized plans to dot and count. This because having requested as a member of the public to see the planning file, I discovered that a fax from Welsh Water stating that "Existing public sewerage cannot accommodate further flows" 2002.10.01 Babtie Welsh Water Fax A4.pdf  Had been filed in an Application file for the same site (a belt and braces type of thing) and thus not presented  to the Planning Committee. This meant that whilst I at the Public Inquiry could ask about such issues of sewer capacity, Flintshire's barrister could not, since it had not been part of the original refusal.


So after counting 2,500 properties and doing some other homework, I attended the first Public Inquiry on this developers previous application. This got me some local publicity and got me elected to the local Community Council a month or so later. Fast forward to just before the 2011 Planning Committee Meeting, and I asked Flintshire County Council (I must have been doing the right things, because I was elected as a County Councillor in 2008.

(Apologies if this a little disjointed, I'm trying to do about three things at once here!)

Clive

You could well be right there.  Due to the topography of the site, there were two obvious ways for the sewers to run. The favoured one was to pump the sewer to a convenient point to connect into the existing sewer which was overloaded. The planned location of the pumping station had an "exclusion zone " around it which intruded into the rear gardens of existing property and would exclude even existing constructions within those properties. This would make sale of those difficult. The other option was gravity; which is very reliable (well gravity is, perhaps not the way it is used) but this required laying pipes through existing property. What didn't help was that Welsh Water had drawn up a plan with a strong recommendation that the gravity option be used - they simply stated the connection point. Then their engineer went on maternity leave and somehow another plan was submitted by Welsh Water which lacked the connection detail. The refused application went to Appeal and this was granted Anyway, the required property which had been rented out for some time became vacant and then up for sale. It was bought by a mystery buyer which turned out to be the developer. Once the pipes were laid, they sold the bungalow. Welsh Water also determined that there were some pinch-points further away from the site and these were conditioned for the developer to pay the upgrade costs. Had they used the pumped rote, there would have been a few hundred metres of under sized pipework.


As an aside to all this, the 2,500 properties quoted came from my request to Welsh Water as to how many properties were connected to that sewer in 2004. They did NOT know, but told me to do what they do and count the properties on a plan. They then gave me a pile of A2 sized plans to dot and count. This because having requested as a member of the public to see the planning file, I discovered that a fax from Welsh Water stating that "Existing public sewerage cannot accommodate further flows" 2002.10.01 Babtie Welsh Water Fax A4.pdf  Had been filed in an Application file for the same site (a belt and braces type of thing) and thus not presented  to the Planning Committee. This meant that whilst I at the Public Inquiry could ask about such issues of sewer capacity, Flintshire's barrister could not, since it had not been part of the original refusal.


So after counting 2,500 properties and doing some other homework, I attended the first Public Inquiry on this developers previous application. This got me some local publicity and got me elected to the local Community Council a month or so later. Fast forward to just before the 2011 Planning Committee Meeting, and I asked Flintshire County Council (I must have been doing the right things, because I was elected as a County Councillor in 2008.

(Apologies if this a little disjointed, I'm trying to do about three things at once here!)

Clive