With Howden Councillor Mark Preston and Eastrington ResidentsA number of East Riding residents have been receiving a somewhat threatening letter from the East Riding of Yorkshire Council (ERYC) regarding ‘Unauthorised Vehicular Access’ from public highways. The letter informs residents that they must stop using their drives until a satisfactory means of access to the ‘kerbed footway or verge’ has been constructed to the satisfaction of the council – or in layman’s terms: until the householder has paid a council approved contractor to install dropped kerbs in the footpath fronting their property at a cost estimated to be £800. Failure to do so and residents will be guilty of a criminal offence and liable to a fine not exceeding £1,000.
A dozen or so residents of Eastrington’s Pinfold Street received these letters, and after meeting with them I can confirm their attitude ranged from anger to worry, angry that the issue of the dropped kerbs had not been picked up during the process when they purchased their homes (in some instances buying the house from the council), and worried that they will be faced with a fine if they continue to use their drives as they have done for as many as 40 years. Some of the residents are pensioners; others are even council tenants – living in council houses!
I am led to believe that since receiving the letters some householders have parked their vehicles on Pinfold Street which had the effect of blocking the road for farm vehicles, particularly combine harvesters, who were trying to get to their fields after the crops had at last dried out sufficiently to harvest. If all the residents on Pinfold Street resort to parking their cars on the road, I'm sure the resulting traffic congestion in the area would be unacceptable. We have to remember that for an action there can sometimes be an equal or greater reaction that is not foreseen.
Residents on Howden's Derwent Estate who received similar letters have the same concerns and contacted my fellow ERY Councillor Mark Preston regarding the issue.
I share the feelings of the residents of Eastrington and Howden when they say the letters are badly written and somewhat intimidating. I don't have a problem as such with the concept of householders paying for their own 'dropped kerb access', if it is their responsibility.
It is unfortunate that residents were not given a notice period rather than the threat of a £1000 fine, and in the present climate many people may not be able to find the £800 at one time to pay for this work. Obviously this is an internal matter for the Council of which I am a member, BUT I hope the sending out of such ‘heavy handed’ letters will not be repeated and lessons will be learnt.
13 comments:
Thanks for raising this issue for us - hope a solution acceptable to all parties can be achieved soon.
JI
One of my main veiws is, that if the council are so up on rules and regs why have they waited 28 years since the 1980 act to do something about the kerbs, and wanting to give us the bill of dropping the kerbs. The council want the residents of Pinfold St and Derwent Estate to carry the can because the council, can not get there house in order when it comes to spending money in the right areas. Resident
Perhaps the council officers who seem to run uncontrolled should be reminded that we the council tax payers provide their employment and salaries.
Additionally our elected councillors should take a tight grip on the various departments and insist that any such action is not permitted without proper consideration.
The people of the various communities should make their voices heard
Re. the previous comments,
I am looking into why this has suddenly happened after '28 years' as you say.....but this may take a little time!!
I agree that there are instances (this being one), that elected councillors should take a tight grip, and Mark Preston and I, along with a number of our fellow councillors, are doing this. I have already been assurred that a re-drafting of the 'standard letter' that residents received is to take place, in order to give a grace period.
I am certainly in favour of local communities having their voices heard, in fact if we're ever going to bring decision making to the local level the Council has to at first listen.....
Why is it that streets, in Howden and Eastrington of similar type of housing, have had there kerbs dropped free of charge in recent years. Is it that the council are strapped for cash, and are going any ways or means to get it. When we already live in a rip off country like this one. Thanks to Blair and Brown.
I read with interest your blog post and the article in the goole times about some residents having to get drop kerbs fitted. I recently applied to the E R council for permission to install kerbs in Gilberdyke and received such permission with conditions. The condition was that I used a contractor from an aproved list from the council. I contacted 7 contractors from the list local to the area 6 weeks ago, so far only one has bothered to give a price that was £1000.00, I thought this was a litte too high but no other contractor has bothered to give me a quote. It seems the council has given these people a licence to print money, because I have spoken to a contractor not on the list who said it should cost between £300.00 to £400.00 and this firm is one of the biggest civil contractors in the area, so how come a small contractor can charge so much and why dont the council use companies who will actually want the work?. we need the drive doing to make it easier for my partner to get our disabled son to and from the car into the house. But the £1000.00 is beyond our limits. The main point of this letter is that the E R council dont make it easy for anyone to comply with the law.
Is there any "good" reason why an approved contractor must be used? Surely anyone with the requisite skills and materials could do the job subject to a final inspection by a council agent. I are not in the position of the affected residents but if I was I am absolutely 100% certain I could perform the work to comply with the required standard
You raise a good point - after all a builder building a house does not have to be registered with the Local Authority, building control inspect the building at different stages and finally sign off the construction once complete. I guess there is a cost implication of having an inspector coming out to visit every ‘dropped kerb driveway entrance’ which may well be prohibitive, and to approve a number of contractors to do this work ‘unsupervised’ may well be the much cheaper option
Spot on comments by that person who mentioned about getting equally as skilled civil engineers to do the work not approved one`s by the council. As long as the council come and inspect and tick the job off to see if its all upto standard, what is the problem with that. As far as I`m concerned the council are out of order by dictating who you get to do the job. But what`s in it for them? Because at the end of the day its not about rules and regs, its money all the way through. The joke is that you have to pay so much up front before you can see the list of approved contractors, its an absolute scandal. So the householder cannot enquire or plan to have work done without been charged.
Hi Paul
I see we are in the Telegraph (at least the web version) this afternoon!!!!
http://www.telegraph.co.uk/news/uknews/2777214/Villagers-banned-from-parking-outside-homes-because-of-wrong-kerbs.html
JI
I wonder how far a test case would get if someone did the work to a suitable standard and the ERYC took them to court? Any test of reasonableness would see ERYC laughed out of court and rightly so. Unfortunately we the residents would end up with a bill for the time and money wasted.
Yesterday morning I had a long meeting with the East Riding of Yorkshire Council's Head of Service with overall responsibility for this issue, after which, I'm hopeful that a solution can be quickly found.
The emails and calls I've received have been absolutely staggering. As I said in the original post - we must address this issue quickly, learn from it and move on......
if a contractor has public liability insurance and can work to council spec they can do the job and the council cant stop you we do them all the time and come into contact with highways they dont like it but there is nothing they can do
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