Telegraph poles?

[Carol]

We have just bought a piece of land with a pole (old wooden, carrying mains electricity) bang in front of an old wall. We had no paperwork about it on our solicitor's searches so no evidence of a 'wayleave' or payment of a 'peppercorn rent'. We have been quoted almost £2000 for a slight relocation. Does anyone have any experience about the ability of a landowner to have it shifted. It is not even our supply!

 

[biffvernon]

What and you didn't notice it when viewing the property

We've got one - the great thing is that out of the blue each year a cheque arrives. Worth a couple of bottles of wine.

 

[Flyfisher]

We had two such poles carrying electricity to our house and also have another two in a field carrying electricity to someone else.

I arranged to have the two supplying our house removed by chatting to a very nice chap from EDF who came out to inspect the cabling when we had some scaffolding erected. Cutting a long story short, I dug the trench (= paid a local 'man-with-a-digger') and they replaced the overhead cables with an underground one. They were even nice enough to let me keep the poles, although they would have taken them away if I hadn't wanted them.

Because these two poles were for our benefit, there was no wayleave or rental agreement for them. However, the two other poles in the field do have a formal agreement and they pay us about £32 per year for both of them. This is because they are not for our benefit.

I'd be very surprised if there is no agreement regarding your poles. Do they have a notice on them anywhere? There should be something giving details of who to contact in case of any need. There should also be a reference number for each pole. Either way, I would contact the local energy company for your area (not necessarily the same company that sends your electricity bills) and ask them for a copy of the agreement for them to be on your land.

If you can get them to send someone out to 'check them over' then you will hopefully find that the person who comes out is as friendly and helpful as in my case. He was the person that made everything happen for me, the call-centre people could only refer to standard procedures and, to be honest, £2000 seems a fair price for the amount of work that was eventually involved in replacing my overhead supply with an underground one - one big 'workshop truck', one Land Rover with a 'cherry-picker', one other van and three people for a whole day. The mobile workshop seemed to be the most important bit of equipment as it contained the tea-making facilities. Fortunately, my overhead cables were (apparently) in a bad condition so they needed replacement anyway (or so I was told :wink: ) and it was just as easy to put in a new underground cable as an overhead one, as long as I dug the trench, which I did.

If there really is no agreement for the poles being on your land then I would guess you are in a strong position regarding having them moved. As you have only just bought the land, it might also be worth asking your solicitor why this issue didn't come up during the conveyance and what are your rights if there really is no agreement.

As an aside, one of our poles also carried our BT lines to the house and I had to have these moved before the pole could be removed. Another long-story-cut-short, but it turned out that the BT person for this job lived in my village and he duly dropped off some lengths of BT underground piping for me to bury (another half-day for the local 'man-with-a-digger') before popping in one afternoon to re-lay our phone lines, allowing me to remove the telegraph pole. BT didn't charge me for this.

Incidentally, in both cases it was explained to me that they sub-contracted all their trench digging and that it would be very expensive for me if they had to pass on those costs, hence the reason I arranged this myself.

Apologies for this post turning into a bit of a ramble, but I hope it's encouraging to know that these things can be done even if you're dealing with large 'faceless' organisations. The trick is to make contact with a 'real' person who can actually make things happen.

 

[Jon Maine]

Here are a couple of web pages which may prove useful

http://www.hamer-associates.co.uk/faqs/#q3

http://www.rics.org/NR/rdonlyres/214C732B-4858-49E4-B72B-5196C221F504/0/ElectricityWayleavesDR.pdf

As far as I am aware if a wayleave exists you can serve them notice to remove if you stop accepting money for 3 months. At that point if they have done nothing legally to oppose they have to remove the pole. In your instance I would have thought you have a stronger position if no wayleave exists. Most wayleaves are based on agricultural values so for residential or commercial land higher fees can be applied if any one is accepting payments.

There are several specialist companies dealing with wayleaves on customers behalves check them out on google.

Possibly if this falls inside the curtilidge of your insured property you may have legal disputes cover. If thats the case call for legal advice and they may well immediately take it up on your behalf.

I was fortunate here the county council had a street light on my wall, I asked them they removed it, as did the local energy company when they had a cable on my wall.

I have yet to tackle the gas utility as they have a shared supply cutting across my land next to the street, They have been tackled but have decided to ignore it so far. I think I will be asking for a sum equal to the £400 I got charged to slide a bit of pipe into a duct in a trench that i dug which took them 30 minutes to install and connect. Later..........


Good luck

 

[Carol]

Great, lots of information, thank you. We can see it all too clearly,Biff. The land was originally part of our garden sold off in the 60's and now is back with the house. Some may remember my panic last year when the vendors toyed with developing it and another plot, but we got it.

Nothing came up on the searches so I will chase the solicitor again. We had a lovely man from Scottish! and Southern Elec. who quoted for the removal. Our pole carries our neighbour's garage mains supply and a street light but nothing else and he had no information about a wayleave and there is certainly no evidence of even 32p being paid!

Curiouser and curiouser.

 

[Nemesis]

Just to say really pleased you got the land - no doubt the pole carry on will be sorted in the end, but nice to have the peace of mind and some control over what will happen in future to what surrounds you.

 

[skier-hughes]

My only concern is that buying the land recently with pole in situ may make it harder for you to get it removed.

 

[chuckey]

I had a pole on land adjoining the back of my house that actually trapped my gutter, there was also the feed to a chap across the lane that ran from this pole around my eaves down my wall. then underground across the lane. I also wanted the meter moved, so I contacted NEDL, who wanted £249 but would not give a date for moving it. I got hold of UIP(?, the transmission guys for NEDL), they surveyed the scene, said it would cost about £2000, but as the original job was of a poor standard, I would get a discount. As I wanted to dig a land drain where this pole was, I agreed as I had no other option. They said that if I installed an external meter box they would wire to it.
In the end they put a new pole on my land, wired to my new meter box and moved all the gubbins into it, re-routed my neighbours cable all underground, and charged me £200, of which I have had about £135, back in wayleave fees so far. And I cancelled my meter move order with NEDL!
Try and find a convincing story as to why the original installation was poor, it could save you thousands!
Frank

 

[skier-hughes]

Our meter needs movig, out of a barn which will be redeveloped one day into a meter cupboard.
All electrics are into cupboard and working now.
We need to get E-on to fit a cut out switch £585.00
Then we need our electrical supplier to move meter!!!!!

I've discussed this with them several times to get a discount, but they won't budge, as it is their "standard" charge for rerouting a meter and nobody else apparently can do it :twisted:

 

[MdB]

What state is the electrics the supply side of the meter like? Is it new or does it look like it came out of the arc? Ours was very old and we were able to get it all updated for free. I would have been able to get it moved at the same time (within reason) if it wasn't any additional hassle for them. As it was, I got the wire rerouted so it came through a hole in the wall (which I had to drill) rather than coming through a hole in the window frame.

To be honest, I found the Western Power people to be very helpful and entirely reasonable in getting things done.

 

[Nemesis]

Our meter needs movig, out of a barn which will be redeveloped one day into a meter cupboard.

Well, I know of barns converted into houses and shops and offices etc, but this is a new one.

 

[Carol]

Spent pleasant afternoon digging around the raised bed where pole is sitting and found it is quite rotten below surface. Wonder if I might get somewhere with this! This is the first time I ever felt positive about rotting wood.

Have contacted solicitor to see if he had any information through searches and am waiting for a reply. Seems very odd to have no paperwork at all.

 

[Nemesis]

Ooooh yes - dangerous! And can't see why renewal won't mean moving it...

 

[Flyfisher]

Regarding the comments about re-wiring the supply-side of the meter, the work I previously described also included connecting the new underground cable to a brand new, relocated meter as well (no charge). Seems that once they are committed to start a job they can include all sorts of things.

A rotten pole could be very good news indeed. It's certainly a valid excuse to get the electricity company to come out and have a look and if they need to change it I would be very hopeful about having the pole removed altogether. The EDF chap that did my work told me that they regularly inspect poles and change them every ?? years anyway (can't remember how many), which they can determine from the various numbers engraved in the pole.

 

[skier-hughes]

Our meter needs movig, out of a barn which will be redeveloped one day into a meter cupboard.

Well, I know of barns converted into houses and shops and offices etc, but this is a new one.

No credit crunch round here..........

Supply into new meter cupboard is brand new, as we own the old farmhouse and the farmer moved the electrics before telling us, we are now in a position of having to pay for our own moving, whereas if we'd known when he did his we could of tagged it on adn it'd have cost however much a cut out is!!!!!!!!

We took the house knowing these problems existed, so it's just a bind.

 

[AMc]

We're fitting a heat pump as part of our renovations. Having specified a single phase pump we contacted EDF about our supposedly '100A supply' to be told it is actually 'unrated' so a max of 40A. That might explain why our lights dim and the uninterupted power supplies trip a couple of times a day.

To get this 'upgraded' to a real 100A supply would cost the same as moving to 3 phase + £500 on our side of the meter. As we're on the border of the single phase supply anyway and we may as well do that at the same time.
£3057.35 to dig up the road and connect to our new consumer unit because the existing connection is a piece of wet string +£88.13 to have a look in order to quote. Now I have to get the supply company to fit a new meter

 

[MdB]

Bad luck. Getting our master fuse / input connection sorted was money and hassle free. Getting our meter changed to Economy 10 was money free and would have been hassle free if the installer had been bothered to give me a ring before he turned up.

(PS. You are moving to Economy 10 for the heat pump aren't you? Lots of people haven't heard of this tariff)

 

[Penners]

My sister and her husband, who live in the West Country, had a couple of poles that ran across their field, adjacent to their house. They arrived at an agreement with the electricity company (not sure which one, or how they did it) to exchange their annual wayleave payment for an "in perpetuity" contract.

I don't know how much they got, but they seemed very happy with the lump sum.

If you're unable to get the pole removed, I wonder this might be worth investigating.

 

[Penners]

Our meter needs movig, out of a barn which will be redeveloped one day into a meter cupboard.

Well, I know of barns converted into houses and shops and offices etc, but this is a new one.

:lol: :lol: :lol:

Lynne Truss fodder! :wink:

 

[Wren]

In defence of telegraph poles...
Ours are a fantastic perching spot for local birdlife. When my sister first came to see the place - she said "it's a lovely view, but a shame about that telegraph pole". Didn't occur to me that we could get it changed. Now if we are sat upstairs we can see all the birds coming and going, and in summer whole families of swallows. The swallows love to sit on the wires and swoop about and then they even sit on our upstairs windowsills - the most beautiful sight. We also have a telegraph pole next to the vegetable plot behind the house. We were sat there one evening listening to a little owl. My 'other half' said "wouldn't it be amazing if the owl came and sat on that pole in front of us" and just as he had finished speaking the owl arrived and gave us a show.
The downside is that in the past week someone from the electricity company has obviously turned up when we were out and slapped large bright yellow hazard signs on each pole which is pretty hideous looking (compared to just a weathered telegraph pole which sort of blended in). It's not as if we are going to do anything stupid like chop the poles down - they supply the electricity to our house.