Burying bad news: Work to restart on Farnham amenity block after cable shock

Work on a £900,000 amenity building in Farnham is set to restart after hidden cables caused a “shocking” delay.

Farnham Town Council is to write a strongly-worded letter to SSEN after the discovery of pre-war cables at the Gostrey Meadow site put their building plans on hold.

The council and its contractors found themselves in a “stalemate” as efforts by the provider to determine ownership of the two cables, and whether they were live, went on for several weeks.

Building work on the block – which will contain new toilets and storage facilities – is set to resume as FTC has agreed to bury the cables in-situ and build over them, with indemnity insurance being obtained to cover the move.

“We were in a bit of stalemate about what to do,” said Cllr George Murray of the Strategy & Resources Working Group during the Full Council meeting on Thursday.

He said: “No-one wanted to take responsibility for these cables which were pre-1950 and had tiles on them.

“Cables these days have armour plating around them but these didn’t. We didn’t know if these cables were live and no-one knew anything about them.

“We’ve decided to build over the existing cables and get some indemnity insurance to cover ourselves.

“If we don’t we’ll end up wasting time waiting for someone to come forward and that won’t happen.”

Engineers found two additional cables that were not shown on utility records when attempting to divert a main electricity cable which supplies the nearby flats.

Because of their age it is believed the cables may have provided power to a British Restaurant which stood on Gostrey Meadow during the war.

And it seems that FTC is going to do another very British thing: write a letter with town clerk, Iain Lynch, calling SSEN’s attitude “shocking”.

He said: “For them to keep us hanging on for week after week is totally unacceptable. We may write to them.

“It’s critical to us that we finish the building before the pre-election period next year, because if we don’t it will become a challenge.

Mr Lynch added: “The indemnity isn’t as easy as I would like it to be but we’ll try and find a solution.

“We should be putting a bit of pressure on SSEN for their cavalier and not very professional attitude.”

The issue had affected demolition works with contractors being asked to work out of hours to minimise public impact.

An SSEN spokesperson said: “When cables are discovered which could carry a high voltage current, the safety of everyone is paramount.

“We’ve explained to the customer that the team delivering the requested connection diversion were not themselves permitted (because of rules set out by the regulator) to address the cables which were discovered.

“Having conveyed this information, we directed the customer to the appropriate division of SSEN for this issue to be addressed.

“The customer made contact with this division in mid-June. Later that month, they were asked to provide us with more information. Once they did so on July 27, an appointment was booked in two days later (July 29) for a date in mid-August."