Utilities Assessment outline and the connection programme

A utilities assessment outline exists to answer two questions that decide a residential or commercial scheme long before anyone worries about brick colour. Can the site be connected, and when. Neither is answered by a desk study alone, because both depend on formal enquiries to organisations that work to their own timetables.

Get the enquiries away in the first month. The high voltage answer in particular can take longer than the planning determination, and a scheme that reaches committee without it is carrying an unpriced risk.

Existing apparatus and what it does to a layout

Start with what already crosses the site. Asset plans from the distribution network operator, the gas transporter, the water and sewerage undertaker and the telecoms operators, ordered together and overlaid on the survey, give the constraint plan.

Record for each asset its type, size, pressure or voltage, depth where known, and the easement width the owner requires. An overhead line at 11 kilovolts imposes a corridor that no building can enter. A rising main across the middle of a field can be worse than the line, because it is invisible and expensive to move.

Two habits save trouble later. Verify the record drawings on site, since asset plans are indicative rather than surveyed, and record the date each plan was issued so the assessment says how current the information is.

Where apparatus crosses the developable area, the layout should be tested against both options: build around it, or divert it. That comparison is the substance of the assessment, and it needs costs and programme on both sides.

Capacity enquiries, utility by utility

Each utility has its own enquiry route and its own product names, and the answers arrive at different levels of certainty.

Electricity is usually a budget estimate first, giving an indicative connection cost and a point of connection, followed by a formal quotation that fixes both. Where the load is large enough to require reinforcement of the upstream network, the budget estimate is where you find out.

Gas follows a similar pattern, and on many residential schemes the question is now whether a gas connection is wanted at all rather than whether one is available.

Water supply enquiries go to the undertaker's developer services team and cover both capacity and pressure, which are separate answers. Foul drainage capacity is a third enquiry and often the one that produces a condition, since a connection to the public sewer under section 106 of the Water Industry Act 1991 can be refused where the receiving network lacks capacity, with phasing agreed instead.

Telecoms should not be left out. Fibre provision is now expected on new residential development, and the provider needs ducting designed into the street layout rather than retrofitted.

Set the answers out in a table with the enquiry reference, the date, the response and the level of certainty. An officer reading a Utilities Assessment wants to see that the enquiries were made, not a narrative about how utilities work.

Points of connection and the routes to them

A point of connection is only useful with a viable route to it. Map the route from the connection point to the site boundary and record what it crosses: adopted highway, third party land, a railway, a watercourse, a conservation area.

Third party land is the recurring problem. A connection route across a neighbouring field needs an agreement with that landowner, and there is no compulsory mechanism available to a developer to obtain one. Where the only viable route crosses land outside the ownership, that fact belongs in the assessment and in the risk register, not in a footnote.

Crossings of railways, main rivers and trunk roads each bring their own consent and their own timetable. A single watercourse crossing can add several months where an ordinary watercourse consent or an environmental permit is needed, and the drainage design should be developed alongside it rather than after, which is where the Drainage Strategy and the utilities work overlap.

Diversions and how long they really take

Diversion programmes are the most commonly underestimated item in a development programme.

The sequence is an enquiry, a budget estimate, acceptance, detailed design, outage planning, and then the works themselves, which for electricity often have to be scheduled around network demand and cannot happen in winter. Each step has a queue in front of it.

Rather than quoting durations that vary by region and by operator, ask for the indicative programme with each budget estimate and put those dates in the assessment. That way the figures in the document are sourced.

Street works notice periods under the New Roads and Street Works Act 1991 apply to any work in the adopted highway, and traffic management for a main road closure may need to be booked well ahead.

Easements, wayleaves and the substation plot

A substation needs a plot, vehicular access for a transformer, and a deed of easement over the cable route. All three have to be on the layout before it is submitted, because relocating a substation after permission usually needs a further application.

Place it where the network operator will accept it: accessible from an adoptable surface, not in a location that forces residents to look at a kiosk from a living room, and not inside a flood zone where the operator will refuse. Screening it with a hedge is possible, and the operator will still want maintenance access all round.

Wayleaves for overhead lines and easements for buried apparatus both restrict what can be built above and beside them, including tree planting. Check the landscaping proposals against the easement widths, since a landscape scheme approved over a gas main will not be planted.

Phasing against the construction programme

Set the utility milestones against the build programme and identify which ones sit on the critical path. On most schemes the substation energisation date governs first occupation, and the diversion of any apparatus crossing the first phase governs the start on site.

Where a connection cannot be delivered before the first units are complete, the options are temporary supply, phasing occupation, or a planning condition that ties occupation to the connection. Propose the condition yourself rather than having a version of it imposed. The wording matters, and an applicant's draft is usually more workable.

For a fuller treatment of the enquiry process itself, the note on utilities assessment capacity enquiries section by section goes through each response in turn.

What goes into the application

The submitted document should be short and evidenced. A constraints plan showing existing apparatus with easement widths. A table of enquiries and responses with dates and references. A connection route plan. A statement of any diversions required with their indicative programme. The substation location and access. Any conditions the applicant proposes.

Correspondence goes in an appendix, and the assessment itself should be readable without it. Where the foul drainage answer is conditional on network reinforcement, cross-refer to the Foul Sewage Assessment rather than repeating it.

The honest limitation of any utilities assessment at application stage is that budget estimates are not binding. Say so. A document that presents indicative figures as fixed costs will be tested at the first variation, and the credibility of the rest of the evidence goes with it.

Browse the 66 PlanScope report types to see how a utilities assessment sits alongside the drainage and transport evidence.

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