Wayleave agreement for Virgin

[Gromdal]

Hi, not sure where to go with this one - having recently moved house and checked that Virgin could migrate my service, and having been fobbed off a number of times it turns out that the cable trunking under my shared driveway has collapsed and needs repairing. I should say, the trunking was put in place by the developer in advance of any Virgin service being available at time of completion but a cabinet is now in place at the end of the road and my neighbours both have blue rope coming out their trunking ready for cabling to pull through but I don't.

A Virgin engineer has been out an explained that the blockage is definitely under the driveway according to the company who does the surveys and repairs on their behalf. When I broached this with the neighbours they were more than happy for this to take place as we have a moulded block driveway that can easily lifted and replaced with minimal access disruption. Virgin's wayleave agreement to gain permission to lift the shared driveway access essentially amounts to my neighbours giving them carte blanche to lay cable on their actual built property and not just the shared driveway, move vegetation and consent to cabling above ground, attached to the house whilst allowing them access to their assets at any time. Additionally, they require 6 month's notice of any works that might affect any of their assets which isn't an issue if we know the route of the cable but still.

One of my neighbours understandably is refusing to grant permission to such a wide ranging agreement. Virgin maintain its communications industry standard, but as far as I'm concerned they should have no issue drafting one that limits them to the extent of the existing trunking that needs replacing as they've done a survey to assess location. I'm awaiting their reply, but wonder if anyone has had similar experiences and any advice? At present we've been making do with 4G internet and would like to future proof ourselves by getting the fibre cabling sorted (and the neighbours understand that they too would benefit this if they ever changed from Sky) but this agreement seems far too generalist!

[MCFastybloke]

Can you engage a private contractor to lift the paving,repair the duct and pull in the draw rope if needed? We do this stuff all the time

[TaketheCannoli]

Move to Sky, it's better anyway.

[wileeeeeey]

Move to Sky, it's better anyway.

Depends where you live. I can get 1gig here on Virgin if I want (I have 350mb) but only 37mb on Sky and BT.

[Onelasttime]

Can you engage a private contractor to lift the paving,repair the duct and pull in the draw rope if needed? We do this stuff all the time

This would be my solution. And make the original developer pay for doing a half-arsed job in the first place.

[JonRA]

I doubt Virgin or any other similar company will be interested in creating a bespoke contract. The suggestion about sorting the ducting yourself sounds your best bet.

Sent from my Pixel 4a using Tapatalk

[ed335d]

Do the draw-ropes that your neighbors have run through the same section of duct that's believed to be collapsed?

[Gromdal]

Do the draw-ropes that your neighbors have run through the same section of duct that's believed to be collapsed?

That I don't know, they could well do - except Virgin have now closed ranks and wont communicate the engineer's report so they themselves know roughly where they'd need to lift the drive to the point that it might not even be on the property of the first neighbour on the driveway (who has refused the agreement). The wayleave team won't even share the wayleave document my neighbours were being asked to sign (my neighbours have given me a copy anyway now) and wont amend it as they're not the legal team so it looks like my only option is private contractor to repair. Having seen it, I wouldn't sign it either.

With that being said, I'm currently getting 40mb/s down and 20mb/s up with my 4G WiFi from Three which gives me plenty of bandwidth to play with, so I'm probably just going to go down the Freesat recorder box route now using the previous owners Sky connection and when 5G comes along will migrate to that.