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I live in rural Scotland. Every power outage in the last 10 years has been caused by land developers not reading the local utilities plans and accidentally cutt

• cameronh90 2y ago
  To be fair, the UK's "dial before you dig"-type services are next to useless. I've tried to get plans for my house before digging, and UK Power Networks refused my request as I'm not authorised to see the plans apparently. National Grid sent me a blank page with an empty square on it. SGN were the only one that actually sent me a sensible map with what appeared to be accurate contents (insofar as they match where I thought they would be), but even they had a disclaimer on the document they sent me saying they can't be held liable for errors on the map and all digging should be performed by hand to confirm whether a pipe exists. A lot of the major underground infrastructure owners (including Thames Water, BT, Sky, Virgin) just aren't signed up to the asset search services and you have to contact them manually to even find out if they have assets in your area. Of those, only Thames Water actually replied to my email, and they said I'd either have to sling them several hundred pounds or drive down to their office in Reading and look at the archives in person. I did the latter, and the plans were just entirely wrong. Ground Penetrating Radar isn't even an option in my area due to the soil composition. Seems like you just make your best guess and then hope for the best.