An elderly farmer has been threatened by a council for refusing to pay a fine over an “historic” boundary wall he built himself more than 50 years ago.
Ron Knight, 89, has faced seven years of a “living nightmare” since receiving a planning enforcement notice from the council for removing part of a concrete wall in 2017 to allow access to his land.
Despite building the original wall himself in 1973, he was told that he needed planning permission because it was “historic”, and in a “conservation” area.
Yes, yes, average stupidity. But this:
A council spokesman said: “We have applied the expediency test and public interest test to each step of this case.
“We consider that the creation of the access, necessitating the demolition or removal of a wide section of the historic stone wall and associated engineering work to the land behind, fails to safeguard the established character of the conservation area and has caused unjustified harm to a designated heritage asset.”
So, what can we cook up as a synonym for local councul bureaucrat that rhymes with DJ so as to fit the lyric?
Hold on, was it a concrete wall or a stone wall. “Farmer demolishes concrete wall, council fines him for demolishing stone wall” doesn’t make sense.
@jgh
Error 1: assuming that the council knows the difference between stone and concrete.
Error 2: assuming that when presented with evidence of the difference the council can accept that they were wrong instead of doubling down.
Hang the Jobsworth fits the tune and scans ok. I have to say that I never got the Smiths at all, I’m in agreement with Mitch Benn.
“I sat through the song as he droned on and on like some pale intellectual outlaw.
And when he was done I thought that wasn’t much fun, that feller wants to get out more.
And even now my friends are all amazed, when I tell them that I never went through a Smiths phase.”
@jgh The pictures seem to show a dry stone wall. If that’s so it might be considered a historic style, but wouldn’t be a historic structure through its age or events in its past.
Hmm, council or crap DT reporting? In 2025 it’s a bit of a toss up, really.
Either way, jobsworth doesn’t quite cut it…
Desk Jockey?
Stonyground – Oh shut your mouth, how can you say I go about things the wrong way?
Smiths? I liked Johnny Marr’s playing but couldn’t get past Morrisey thinking he was writing modern English folk songs, and that the melodies of such songs have no syncopation whatsoever and consist only of the first three nots of the major scale.
Also, I was a jazzer. Not much there for me.
Sometimes you run into council people who are pretty good. I once had a loose bit of roof on my shed/garage and got a compliance notice from the council, pointing out it was a potential danger to the public and so on (actually the banging noise in the wind probably just pissed off my neighbour). I got up there and there was one sheet of tin that was too badly damaged to even think about nailing it back. So I ripped it off, nailed everything else down, and rang to say ready for inspection.
Two blokes duly turned up. One young, one older. The young bloke did all the talking, I showed him what I’d done, explained it was my place and didn’t care about a hole at the end of roof, etc. He was just getting ready to do the why haven’t you fixed it properly spiel when the older bloke held up his hand to stop him and said “Have you got a broom?” (literally the first thing he had said). I got him one and he went through the shed tapping each roof sheet with the handle. Satisfied, handed me the broom and said to his offsider “we’re done here”.
So pragmatic ones do exist. Or at least did.
That would be “Panic”, m’lud
Still farming aged 89.
So much for UK food security.
Useful tip for councillors, council employees:
Ask yourself: Is this decision likely to expose me to public ridicule in a national newspaper.
“Burn down the disco
Hang the blessed DJ
Because the music that he constantly plays
Says nothing to me about my life”
“Because the music that he constantly plays
Says nothing to me about my life.”
Whereas I can totally relate because all I ever wanted was to be together with the love of my life while being flattened by a truck.
He made the error when he sold his farm, and didn’t keep ownership of the access to the land he retained, and relied on a right of access over the sold land instead. And then somehow he’s been diddled out of those access rights, either because his lawyer who drew them up was an idiot, or someone else has pulled a fast one and when confronted said ‘Sue me’ which will cost the old boy tens of thousands and have no guarantee of winning.
When selling property and retaining some part of it, or some rights or other, always make sure you have the whip hand in the relationship with your new neighbours, because if you don’t you can guarantee some arsehole will eventually be wielding the whip on you. Never rely on the good nature of others, or the law to help you, because it only helps itself, to your money.
Jim,
Sound advice. When I bought this place it didn’t come with a strip of land at the front which led to a track down the side of my house to the owners field at the back.
No problem my solicitor said, the wording gives you full access rights. When I read it the wording it referred to a strip of landed shaded green on the attached land map but it was actually shaded blue. I delayed the purchase until it was corrected but that took some time because the solicitors were crap (when aren’t they?) and the land registry was involved.
The seller got cross as did his solicitor because it was owned by a lovely old lady who also happened to be a near neighbour and everyone agreed she wouldn’t be a problem. I stuck took my guns on the basis that she will sell one day and I didn’t want to come home to find a bolshy new owner had parked a tractor or trailer across my access and I had no recourse. You can get some really strange folk in the countryside when it comes to land rights.
She died just before Christmas and no doubt her heirs will put it on the market so I feel vindicated.
Stonyground you forgot about the bus…
The village of Eskdale in the Lake District used to have a village bobby as used to be the custom in the olden days.. His official vehicle was a Minivan which was housed in a wooden garage opposite his house. Being exposed to Lake District weather for over 50 years, the garage was unsafe and needed replacing. So Cumbria Police submitted plans for a replacement wooden building to the Lake District Park authority , it being well inside the park. The police were told that they could replace the garage but it would have to be of local stone with a local slate roof. Needless to say, the garage was not replaced.
A chap in my village lived in a large Victorian pile which was built literally in a field and about 200 yards inside the National Park boundary . Alongside the house was a large corrugated iron shed which had seen better days. He applied to replace it and was visited by a park official to discuss his intentions. He wanted to build another iron shed, whereupon the official shook his head and told him it was no longer allowed in the park, however ,cough, cough he could replace individual sheets that were unsafe. The penny dropped and the shed was rebuilt one sheet at a time over the next 6 months.