Land entry principles

This document demonstrates Wessex Water’s commitment to the Land Entry Principles agreed between the Industry and its stakeholders in respect of the exercise of statutory land entry powers.

Introduction

This document demonstrates Wessex Water’s commitment to the Land Entry Principles agreed between the Industry and its stakeholders in respect of the exercise of statutory land entry powers.

The availability of water supplies and sanitation are important public health requirements.  In order to undertake this duty, the Industry is afforded statutory powers to access and work in private land.

We recognise that these rights must be exercised responsibly and pledge to follow these principles and our Code of practice for pipelaying powers on private land (‘the Code’).

The principles

• We recognise that our activities may affect landowners and occupiers and aim to exercise our rights of entry in such a way as to limit the impact and disturbance they cause.  Accordingly, as part of our initial consideration of projects, we will consider as early as possible how these might affect land owners or occupiers.
• In planning our activities we will engage with those who are or may potentially be affected by them and where reasonably practicable adapt our works to accommodate reasonable concerns which are expressed.
• All parties should seek to establish and maintain effective communication with each other, recognising that this is essential to a good working relationship.
• We recognise that both those who work for us and our contractors need to understand and implement the Code.   We will therefore train our employees in the requirements of the Code and ensure that compliance is enforced as part of contractors’ duties.
• We will implement systems to monitor and report on compliance with the Code and where our activities or those of our contractors have not complied with the Code, we will take appropriate action to help ensure future compliance.
• We will deal reasonably and promptly with claims that are made where our activities give rise to a claim for compensation.