Ding ding: Claralou's overgrown vegetation versus Council, Round 2

Scrungee, that's smart of you. You've done this stuff before, haven't you? You're correct in your suspicion about the access road. It actually belongs to a housing association which controls a particularly tasty block of flats to our rear. But - and here things get really difficult - the pavement that runs along the side of it (and which my plants were blocking) is council owned, although it hasn't been resurfaced or indeed touched for around forty years. This has led to a very interesting internecine battle between the council and the housing association, with each refusing to remove any rubbish which strays even a centimetre over their own boundary. When the council's rubbish contractors arrived, the council jobsworth who started all this strife spent more time telling them what rubbish not to pick up than what they should clear. I'm afraid I was earwigging from the other side of the wall, so I couldn't help but hear: 'don't you remove nothing from over there, 'cos after the way they (housing assoc) have treated us I ain't doing nobody no favours.' I have pointed out that, if the motivation for all this upheaval is truly the welfare of residents, then perhaps the council ought to be big enough to pick up a few things which have drifted over their boundary. Rubbish tends to have a fairly peripatetic existence anyway; the dumped fridge has now been stripped of its metal and reclines on a bed of old carpet in the access road, whereas it started off on the pavement. Alas, I'm not sure that reason and common sense is going to prevail.

 

Re: my post above & your response I still suspect that pathway to the rear of your property may well be not a 'public right of way' as suggested by your local council [1], and you really need to check it out, either as suggested in my post above, or use your local CAB/Law Centre.

[1] From my experience, it's virtually unheard of for foot ways adjoining rear service roads to have been adopted as public rights of way (but I was involved with several schemes where existing public rights of way were incorporated into new housing schemes)

P.S. I also suggest you contact the Councillor from whatever Local Authority is pursuing you, and seek confirmation that the foot way to the rear of your property is actually designated as a public right of way.

N.B. 'Council owned' doesn't necessarily mean something is 'public'.

 

Thank you, Scrungee.

I suspect that, In The Beginning, my road, along with the warren of little Victorian streets which make up my area, had an alleyway running along the back - just a footway, not a road. In fact, this is still the situation a few doors up beyond our dead end. Goodness knows what the legal status of these alleys is, but the council long ago took responsibility for them. Then, when a large block of flats was built behind our house, an access road which ran parallel to the old alley was added and the two effectively became one entity - but with mixed ownership.

So we have a very peculiar situation indeed and not a particularly satisfactory one.

 

That sounds like that would make it a really interesting question for whoever at the Council has to provide you with an answer, should you ask.

 

Hello Loofah

I have had a few run-ins with the council over the years. Anyone in power is harder to get to than The Pope. All you get is some underling with boxes to tick. Even when the council saw fit to allow the BTL next door to be transformed into short term, multiple occupancy accommodation for crims on early release, on the whole we didn't get to see anyone with real clout.

One thing which I didn't quite realise until I moved here is quite how stressful it is to be at the bottom of the housing pile. Authorities feel it is ok to dump on you simply because you're living in a house which isn't worth very much. A few years ago, we all watched in astonishment as perfectly adequate street lights in the 'conservation area' (which is about five minutes from my road) were replaced by fancy, faux Victorian efforts. It's a shame no one thought to give my road the old ones, as we don't have a matching set, just odds and sods interspersed with large patches of darkness. And yet I'm pretty sure that the 'poor' side of town contributes the bulk of the community tax, simply because there are so many of us jammed into such a small space.

Sadly, most of the people who cared about my street have given up and moved on. I'll be joining them just as soon as I can scrape up the dosh.

 

Just reading over this thread, and not knowing much about access etc...but what's your local elected councillor like? If effective they can be very useful to have on your side as they can lobby/navigate the weirdness that is local authority for you. Some are actually genuinely interested in doing their jobs. Quality varies, but worth making contact and possibly getting them to come down/give them a tour!