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by Lib Dem team on 1 December, 2010
Some problems are easy to sort out: normally where the Council has clear responsibility and has the money to do it.
Others can be tougher.
At the back of Gatley Station car park is a path – one that anyone coming from the South Park Road Estate is likely to use. When it rains the path gets very muddy and covered in puddles – something it would be very nice to fix.
Unfortunately, not only does the Council not own that piece of land, a Land Registry search doesn’t reveal who owns it either. That doesn’t mean that no-one owns it, but it does mean the situation is – at best – messy.
We’d really like the Council to sort out the problem, since it seems unlikely anyone else will. But there are legal issues for the Council in taking action on land it doesn’t own – not that it can’t be done, but there are often legal hurdles to jump over and additional problems to overcome.
In this case, the problem is currently with the Council’s Public Rights of Way team. Pam and I will continue to chase, and I hope the problem can be sorted, but I don’t think it’s going to be a quick fix.
4 Comments
Interesting about the path. I’d have thought that, when planning permission for the newish flats was given, the developer’s lawyer would have checked out who owned the path. And sought permission to have access.
Presumably, there’s no nothing to stop the path’s owner turning up out of the blue and deciding to plant a hedge there, effectively cutting off access to the flats.
This problem stems from the fact that the landowner pays no tax on his land. They can happily sit back and wait for the right moment to cash in on their, often, ill-gotten gains. Now if land was subject to an annual tax with, maybe, exemptions for those who actually use it? What a very Liberal idea. I wonder what the senior partner in the Coalition would make of that?
Much as it would be very tempting to launch into a detailed debate on Land Value Tax, I think I’ll leave it to people who know rather more about it than I do, Les. Definitely an interesting idea, though.
Hi Ian,
Its not a puddle more a pond! The water runs off the Elms land they need to put in a drain to stop this happening.