A Belfast lawyer was to meet this week with building warranty provider the National House Building Council (NHBC) on the behalf of residents of Galliagh Shore who have been left in a “desperate situation”, living in homes with an inadequate sewerage system which has resulted in toilets no longer functioning.

James Turner, a lawyer with O’Reilly Stewart Solicitors in Belfast approached residents of Galliagh Shore to try and help them with their sewerage issues. Mr. Turner deals with assisting residents in distressed properties either against the developers or professionals who are involved but usually the warranty providers and in this case NHBC.

"We are at the very early stage, simply seeing how we could help," Mr. Turner told this newspaper.

"The building warranty provider is NHBC and basically what they do is if there is a new build property they provide warranties as to workmanship and it's basically an insurance policy. I'm going to meet them, their lawyers in Belfast and their head of claims in England to see if we can get a resolution without necessarily going to court so that's really the first port of call and then after that if we can't get the resolution that way we'll examine the various other ways we can try and help these people," he explained, adding: "Our role at the minute is to see if we can assist and if we can, we will and if we can't, we won't. We are at the fact finding stage at the minute but I think it is encouraging that the NHBC have expressed a willingness to talk."

Speaking to The Impartial Reporter this week about Mr. Turner's support, Liam Dunbar, a resident of Galliagh Shore said: "Hopefully it means we’ll get some sort of solution from this. We’ve had a provisional decision from the financial ombudsman saying they agree with us. We’re stuck in a position where we are waiting for another decision to be made and for the ombudsman to make the next decision which will hopefully be for us but if it’s not, we are really stuck then."

In 2006 Carncourt Properties completed the second phase of Galliagh Shore. Much to the horror of all the owners, the builders were permitted to have Building Control pass all the houses and sell on to these families without ensuring that they had complied with all the legal requirements to enable the sewers to be adopted by Northern Ireland Water (NIW). Soon afterwards the builder was declared bankrupt and in the liquidation of the company, the estate was abandoned.

Until now the residents have paid for servicing to the pumping station and for tankering when the sewers become over stretched but the pumping station has now completely broken down.

"We’ll need to go to the government to get the money off them to do it but in the meantime we’re in no-man's land because nobody wants to help us and I think the government’s waiting for the NHBC to say one way or another before they help us," explained Mr. Dunbar.

"At the minute the sewage is nearly up to the top of the manholes, a couple of toilets have stopped working and the pumping station is overflowing into Lough Galliagh and the smell is awful," he told this newspaper.