Drainage

Drainage is the least glamorous thing the Association does and one of the most important. The land drains were put in to take rainwater off the estate roads, and they are the reason those roads survive a wet winter.

Ownership is split between the Association and public bodies, so it is worth knowing which is which.

The three surface water drains

The east-west pipe. Runs from a garden in East Close, under the East Close and West Close roads and through five more gardens, before joining a north-south public sewer owned by Southern Water. The combined pipe discharges to sea at the outfall by Hannah’s Groyne, near the western beach huts.

After taking legal advice in 2018, the Association took on responsibility for maintaining and if necessary renewing this pipe and its associated works. The exception is any connection made for the benefit of an individual property, which stays with that property.

If the pipe crosses your garden, you have a statutory duty not to do anything that might damage or obstruct it. In practice that means being careful about building work and about planting trees.

The two Sea Way pipes. Both run under Sea Way and discharge across the Greensward to the beach. Both take water off the road itself, and the western one also takes surface water from a few properties.

Roads with no surface water drain

Sea Close, The Byway and Old Point have no surface water drainage. If you live on one of these, rainwater from your property is yours to deal with, normally through a soakaway.

Merry End has two road gullies, each connected to its own soakaway. The Merry End road fund paid to build them, and MOSA maintains them along with the catch pits. The constitution records where each one sits.

That was later found not to be enough on its own, and in 2013 the road was given a larger system on top of it: two further soakaway locations, one taking 20 crates and the other 12, each with its own catch pit. Residents agreed to it and it was paid for from the Merry End road fund, the same arrangement as the original two. Which properties the crates sit in front of is kept on MOSA’s own records rather than published here.

Sea Lane

Properties fronting Sea Lane have open ditches or piped culverts along the frontage. There is a common law duty on each owner to keep the ditch or culvert between their property and the road clear.

Ditches and watercourses between properties

Several parts of the estate have a ditch or watercourse running between or behind gardens, not just along a road frontage. Keeping these clear matters for the same reason the road drains do: in a wet winter, or when a high tide meets saturated ground, a blocked ditch is what turns a wet garden into a flooded one.

If a ditch or watercourse crosses or borders your land, you are what the law calls a riparian owner, and that comes with some long-standing duties, whether or not they are written into your deeds:

• keep the bed, banks and any culverts or screens clear of blockages, fallen branches and litter, so water can flow through
• let water pass downstream without obstructing it, polluting it, or diverting it in a way that increases flood risk to someone else
• accept flood flows onto your land as they come, though you are not obliged to improve drainage capacity beyond ordinary upkeep
• keep garden waste, grass cuttings and chemicals out of the water and off the banks
• get the right consent before building over a ditch, altering a bank, or using herbicides near a watercourse. Main rivers are regulated by the Environment Agency; ordinary watercourses, which is what most of these are, by West Sussex County Council as the Lead Local Flood Authority, or by an Internal Drainage Board where one covers the area

Where a ditch runs between two gardens, the duty is normally shared between both owners. Agreeing that informally with your neighbour, and keeping it in good order between you, is usually enough: it is not an onerous task, and it protects everyone’s gardens as well as the land itself.

Before you build

Your statutory duties are set out in the Land Drainage Act 1991 and the Arun District Council by-laws of 2004.