How long does a sewer connection take?
A sewer connection in the Highway (doing the actual physical work) can take as little as a few days, up to a week or two. And occasionally longer in the event that the public sewer is a long way from the site.
Beware though – the paperwork required in advance will take much, much longer…
….You will need to do a Section 106 application first, which we will normally take care of for you. A Section 106 application will normally be completed and the ‘Approval Letter’ issued within 3 weeks, though it can sometimes take longer dependent on the complexity of the job, current lead times with the water authority and the extent of their enquiries throughout the application process.
In the event that the public sewer is in the Highway (90% of the time) we will then need to apply to the local Highways Dept at the County Council for a Section 50 Licence, ordinarily you cannot do this yourself, we have to do it for you. This process cannot normally be started until you/we have the Section 106 Approval Letter from the water authority – as Highways need to know that the Water Authority are in agreement and that the connection is ‘legal’.
The Section 50 application will normally take anything from a few weeks to a couple of months to complete. This is dependent on many different factors including the complexity of the job. Quite often the process will involve a site meeting between us and a Highways Inspector, and representations back and forth between us and Highways, before a decision is made on details such as method of traffic management to be used, sequence of works etc.
Once everything has been agreed and the Section 50 licence has been issued, we have to give notice to Highways that we want to use it. For a very small job in the Highway, the notice period can be as little as 1-2 weeks. For a week’s work in the Highway, the notice we have to give is often a minimum of 3 weeks, and it is often 3 months or more for a major project.
An increasing number of jobs in the Highway require a road closure, and the minimum legal notice period for one of these is 3 months. And just because we give notice to Highways as to when we wish to use our licence, we won’t necessarily get permission to do so. There must be no other roadworks going on within a certain radius of the site at the time, and in some instances other contractors could have booked ‘road space’ in the surrounding area for many months concurrently, meaning you’ll have to join the back of the queue. In some areas you cannot work during school term time, you’ll have to wait for the next school holiday – that’s as long as other contractors do not already have ‘road space’ booked for then. So all in all:
Time required to get a Section 106 to connect to a public sewer 3-6 weeks.
Then… Time required to get a Section 50 to ‘dig up the road’ 3-10 weeks.
Then… Notice period to be able to use a Section 50 Licence 1-12 weeks+
Then… Time taken to do the work (normally) 3 – 10 days.
Total amount of time anything between 8 and 30 weeks.
In the event that you need a sewer connection doing please contact us as soon as possible!
You’ll be surprised how many people build a house and then ask us to start the sewer connection process, whereas this process needs starting ideally when the build starts.
By JWC
