Somebody has covered up my water metre!

[Juliav40]

Hello everybody

 

If anybody has advice of what to do in my situation I'd really appreciate it.

 

I rent my house and so I'm not in UK. A leak developed in December and the first my tenants knew of it was when a bill for over £500 turned up in early December. My managing agent arranged for the leak to be fixed by a local public works contractor. They turned up and instead of providing us with an estimation of works as they were instructed to do, they just went ahead, got a KCC licence and did the job. The invoice for 6 hours of unapproved work comes in at £960.00.

 

In the meantime they (contractor's) decided there is a problem with the metre and Southern Water probably needed to replace the metre and so they would leave back filling the trench for that purpose. Anyway, they obviously changed their minds on that score because they returned two days later to fill in the hole.

 

Between Friday 10th to Friday 17th December, somebody (and the original works contractor says it was not them!) came to the house and completely tarmacked over the water metre.

 

The contractor says it must have been somebody under instruction from Southern Water. Southern Water say it wasn't.

 

My Southern Water bill is being kept on hold for the moment, and I am intent on not paying the contractor's their invoice until somebody takes responsibility for the metre.

 

In all of this my managing agent seems to have done nothing for the last two months, other than query the invoice and ask the contractor's who filled in the hole (for which his answer was that Southern Water must have done it). I have asked him to officially document all of this in writing to both Southern Water and the local contractor's he got onto the job. He prefers to meet with Southern Water at the site of the filled in water metre.

 

Does anybody know where I stand in all of this and what course of action I should be taking? I know that companies do not hesitate to bung you over to their debt collectors and I really don't want that.

 

Thank you for any advice at all!

 

Julia

[ihateyes]

Hello everybody

 

If anybody has advice of what to do in my situation I'd really appreciate it.

 

I rent my house and so I'm not in UK. A leak developed in December and the first my tenants knew of it was when a bill for over £500 turned up in early December. My managing agent arranged for the leak to be fixed by a local public works contractor. They turned up and instead of providing us with an estimation of works as they were instructed to do, they just went ahead, got a KCC licence and did the job. The invoice for 6 hours of unapproved work comes in at £960.00.

 

In the meantime they (contractor's) decided there is a problem with the metre and Southern Water probably needed to replace the metre and so they would leave back filling the trench for that purpose. Anyway, they obviously changed their minds on that score because they returned two days later to fill in the hole.

 

Between Friday 10th to Friday 17th December, somebody (and the original works contractor says it was not them!) came to the house and completely tarmacked over the water metre.

 

The contractor says it must have been somebody under instruction from Southern Water. Southern Water say it wasn't.

 

My Southern Water bill is being kept on hold for the moment, and I am intent on not paying the contractor's their invoice until somebody takes responsibility for the metre.

 

In all of this my managing agent seems to have done nothing for the last two months, other than query the invoice and ask the contractor's who filled in the hole (for which his answer was that Southern Water must have done it). I have asked him to officially document all of this in writing to both Southern Water and the local contractor's he got onto the job. He prefers to meet with Southern Water at the site of the filled in water metre.

 

Does anybody know where I stand in all of this and what course of action I should be taking? I know that companies do not hesitate to bung you over to their debt collectors and I really don't want that.

 

Thank you for any advice at all!

 

Julia

 

 

Im no legal ealge here, but i take it the meter belongs to Southern Water, dispute the bill, and tell them you wnt the meter reread!! Surely the will then need to make the access to the meter. If the meter is o/side ur house on footpath, you need permission from the council to open the ground up (if im right, whereas they dont!).

 

go for that angle

[Juliav40]

I hadn't thought of taking that angle so I could do that. As it is Southern Water have been waiting for my tenants to call in a second metre reading since 12th December. I left the managing agent to handle things and it turns out that he didn't bother telling Southern Water at all that there was any kind of problem here. I've got a feeling that he really should have. I was assuming that any mess the managing agent made, then he will have to clear it up but I'm not so confident now that it will pan out that way.

 

BTW do you mean that if I need to have work on my pipes via access from the pavement then I must pay a licence but any contractor who carries out work on behalf of utilities or council does not? A KCC licence is £300!

 

Completely separate issue but why would anybody go and tarmac over a metre?