Water Leakage

Replies to This Discussion

Permalink Reply by John D on May 1, 2012 at 15:08

This happens every time after heavy rain. Water seems to collect somewhere higher than the Inspace building and comes out of the gutter gratings, presumably because the drain is blocked further down towards Wightman Road.

I had thought that this was going to be  fixed when they closed Wightman Road  a couple of weeks ago " for repairs to a collapsed sewer "  but apparently not.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by 3eo1zqkstfaij on May 4, 2012 at 19:26

I have posted this elsewhere but you may find this info useful

I have also been trying to report this flood/leak this week. I was originally told by Thames Water that this is a private road belonging to the council and they have told the council to fix it.

I was very surprised to find that this is a private road does anyone else know anything about this?

I thought this sounded a little strange so the following day contacting Haringey Council and a lovely lady called Pat did some investigations, sent out a couple of men to have and then called me back.  The land that the leak is on is owned by First Capital Connect and Pat reported the leak to them for me.  I have a telephone and a reference number so thought I would give it a few days and then get back on the phone if the leak is not fixed. Sadly a Bank Holiday weekend is never good for such repairs.

Unfortunately, if they do not repair the leak our only recourse appears to be trying to get Thames Water to enforce the repair. This could take some time.  I wonder if anyone else knows of another way to enforce speedy repairs on unused land or where those responsible do not take their responsibilities seriously. It seems such a shame to waste all this water.

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Alan Stanton on May 5, 2012 at 0:06

As you've discovered, Frizzy, the reason that Haringey has not repaired this part of roadway is that the section of Hampden Road N8 adjacent to the station belongs to Network Rail and - as you say - is included in the lease to the operating company.

The search facility on HoL is good but not great. So it's not easy to search here. But here's one link. And a second one here. (There may be more.) I looked into a this few years back, because of a parking query from a friend of mine. I was sent a plan by Haringey and Adam Coffman got a more detailed one.

What is really dismaying is the apparent failure of the Council or any of the agencies involved to learn from work done in the past to investigate and establish such basic facts. As you describe, this has meant inconvenience to residents, to local businesses and organisations. Plus an apparent delay in identifying who is responsible for taking action and getting started. And now it's a Bank Holiday weekend.

So while all credit to Pat and her colleagues who did the detective work, the fact is that they really shouldn't have had to start again from scratch. It was a waste of time and effort. Pat had to battle with an incompetent system: one which either failed to store information properly; or fails to retrieve it quickly and efficiently.

This seems to be part of wider issues which increasingly worry me. Haringey staff - and our "partners" in other agencies - often appear to walk or drive past obvious street problems: either without noticing them; or perhaps ignoring them. A water leak causing a pool over several days is hardly difficult to spot.

In this case we had the advantage that residents took the trouble to phone/email and report a problem. People who - I would guess - can be persistent and are confident in dealing with bureaucracies. You can probably imagine what happens in parts of the borough where residents are perhaps less articulate, don't have English as their first language, and may be a lot easier to fob-off.

(Labour councillor Tottenham Hale ward)

• ▶ Reply

Permalink Reply by Hugh on May 5, 2012 at 0:23

Try the tags, Alan.

• ▶ Reply