Survey of Family Homes Experiences of a Footpath
7th January 2014
Survey of Family Homes Experiences of a Footpath
1.Somerset
•Council decided to add seven new bridleways across land, no prior discussion or consultation
•Caused great stress, anxiety and frustration to family, wife had a stroke brought on by the experience
•Safety not considered, new routes placed down busy farm track and across railway track
2.Staffordshire
•Rights of way imposed across land by means that can only be described as unreliable and dubious
•Council had unlimited public funds to pay court costs and hire barristers
•Whole family endured great mental stress, wife suffered several nervous breakdowns
•No attempt in distinguishing the difference between ‘use by the public at large’ as opposed to ‘used by workers on the estate’
3.Wiltshire
•Application to upgrade footpath to Byway Open to all Traffic (BOAT) made by adviser to council.
•Conflict of interest
4.Bedfordshire
•Neighbour applied for footpath through field, no consultation, only evidence from family and friends and not given under oath
•Council resorted to prosecution at great public cost, they showed no attempt to reach a solution
•Council showed no understanding, when shown how close a new footpath was to family home windows response was ‘put some net curtains up’
•Experienced wife crying every night at the actions of the council
•Learning to never trust council officers, appear vindictive and devious
•Suffered a nervous breakdown, conclusion of psychologist was this resulted from treatment of council
•Some councillors commented that they were ‘waiting for me to fall off my perch’
5.Devon
•Requested a gate to protect the family children from a nearby river
•Council view ‘not a material concern for the Highways Act’ and ‘no dangers posed to family’
•Council view gates allowed for protecting livestock only, no consideration for human life
•Council member was campaigning to upgrade footpath to bridleway, danger to family home and children’s welfare not a concern for council
•Council made threats of legal action
•Children unable to play safely outside, normal family not landowner
•Councils approach is confrontational and irrational.
6.Somerset
•New footpath created by council subsequently attempt to upgrade for vehicle access
•Council did not notify the owners of the land
•Criminal proceedings lead to owner having mental breakdown, was hospitalised and within days of being discharged committed suicide
•Owner subjected to brutal onslaught by council, the worry was a contributory factor to his suicide.
7.Derbyshire
•New footpath proposed through gardens
•Caused great strain on the family
•Council took to public inquiry
•Suffered breakdown such was the stress on family
•Went to civil court, four Law Lords ruled no case for footpath
•Council continue to spend public money pursuing the footpath despite cutbacks to essential services
8.Warwickshire
•Footpaths established through family homes, split homes, crosses drive, splits garden
•No respect for family homes given
•Cannot leave children/grandchildren in garden
•No consideration to safety of people walking across drive, council has no concept of risk assessment
•A marathon being run through family garden
9. Cambridgeshire
•Council spent £0.5m of public money on pursuing a claim for a bridleway/vehicular access
•We are under extreme distress as we have lost our family farm and business and soon our home also.
•This litigation over 15 years, in defending our property has finished us financially. We have been left with nothing following our fight against a corrupt Cambridgeshire CC.
•The County Council drummed up spurious support in order to implement a vehicular highway, a bridleway and footpaths, where none previously existed.
•The distress and anxiety suffered by our family cannot be put into words. Utter disbelief that in this day and age a bogus claim of public rights can be held to legally exist at the stroke of a pen by a civil servant with no legal qualifications.
•We have no security, what other business can be subject to open access 24/7?
10. South Somerset
•Suffer verbal abuse and photographs taken of my property
•Suffer crime, items stolen
•Police said cannot install CCTV as against human rights of walkers, no rights for family
•Live on own, constant fear of crime
11. South Wales
•Bought the last house to be built on a small housing estate.
•Right of way claimed through new family home
•Hearing initiated, Inspector selected had serious complaints made against him a couple of months previously. The errors of law made by that Inspector are too many to mention.
•Home owners now have stress related health issues and one had to give up work as become insomniac and felt no longer able to work properly due to being tired during day.
•Have no privacy in their own home and their Human Rights have been violated.
•Men have been witnessed walking through their garden wearing ski masks at 3a.m.
•Men have walked through garden with guns. Police called and took details. One week later men with guns held up a shop in the area.
•Home owners suffer verbal abuse almost daily from users walking through their home. Owner aged 68 and loath to tackle any one.
•Do not get the occasional walker, it starts at 5am with dog walkers and continues until late at night, 24/7 365 days a year.
•No chance of dogs being on leads or under control they run around fouling where ever they please, the owners look on. Dogs have entered house and barked making home owner terrified.
•People have urinated (and worse) in garden.
•Dream home has become a nightmare.
12. Somerset
•Council made application for new BOAT
•Motorcyclists went up and down the track with no silencers on a Sunday afternoon
•Several people swore blind that they regularly rode along tracks.
•Locals born and lived in the area said this not true
•Blatantly false evidence, Inspector adamant and believed the applicants
13. Monmouthshire
•Footpath runs down our drive and ends at our house
•Council advised could apply for closure, said just a formality
•Refused because one person objected, told that "anybody could object for whatever reason, even if he or she didn't use the right of way".
•That effectively means that it would be virtually impossible to get the right of way removed as some busybody would see the application and for no reason other than bloody-mindedness, object to it.
•Council stated letter to our MP that there was no right of appeal against their decision.
•People appear out of nowhere near our house, it usually ends up in a dispute with the walker
•From my experience, the process in attempting to get a right removed is so undemocratic and is loaded against the landowner.
14. Suffolk
•My footpath goes right up my private drive and through my front garden, washing line included.
•There are thousands of people who are or have been affected by a local authority where they have made a public right of way across someone’s front garden like mine.
•Council did not comply with the legislation they did not serve the notices required by LAW, we did not know of a public footpath until the police and asked me to keep my dog on a lead in my own land!!!
•Council made me take down gates that have been there for over 12 years to protect my livestock, I have been bullied into taking them down.
•impact of footpath can be summarised as:
- Threats of physical violence
- Threat of returning with a gun
- Verbal abuse sneers and vitriol comments
- Pictures taken of 15 year old daughter in a bikini in the garden
- Children suffered verbal abuse from walkers who quote ‘your mum is a loser’
- Golf balls thrown in swimming pool
- Fences kicked in over 20 times
- Loss of child minding business because cannot secure children in garden
- Been off work for over year because of stress and worry of the path
- Not had a family holiday together as a unit, because someone has to stay home to secure the house
- Husband lives away during the week as he can’s stand the footpath and the verbal abuse from walkers
- Cars vandalised, nails put under tyres, car Ariel broken off
- Rocks thrown at ponies all suffering facial damage
- Eggs stolen, and thrown at barn
- Horse lorry scratched down one side
- Old boots and a camera lens thrown at geese
- Chickens shredded and attacked by loose dogs
- Goslings stolen
- Horses let out
- Caught a man in my feed room, who claimed he was lost
- My sons football goal net smashed to bits between 19.00 and 21.30
- Men at night shining torches at the house
- Pebbles thrown at bedroom window at 04:10 hours
- Council Health & Safety officers saying risk to public unacceptable but if path fenced would block any access to home
•Written to David Cameron, Defra and the Planning Inspectorate not one have come back with any sensible answers.
•Council admitted in writing they didn’t comply with the law when making the footpath, they falsified their certificate to state that all requirements were met under the Act, yet they are allowed to get away with daylight robbery of my land.
•It is a horrible situation to be in, have suffered the injustice and failings of council, received verbal abuse from walkers, people wandering around my house at all hours. The anguish I have suffered in unimaginable.
15. Carmarthenshire
•Footpath runs up drive past the kitchen/lounge windows through our garden and my elderly neighbour’s garden
•We are in our 70s and have several dogs, we decided to try to get this path closed by the correct channels – what a mistake
•Individuals, many of whom are not even walkers objected. I might understand their position a little better if this path actually went somewhere or was an important link, but it is neither.
•Proximity to our house will compromise our privacy and threaten our security as anyone passing can look straight in – it also goes right by our pond, fruit and veg garden and across the front of our summerhouse where we like to sit in the good weather.
•Cannot secure our property if we are away
•Have we any rights at all in this
16. Gloucestershire (Stroud)
•request to move the style to the end of driveway to protect our four children aged between 3 and 9 years. Concerns over safety and security of family.
•Fortunately the footpath that goes through family home is rarely used with only a handful of people using it each week. We have asked walkers if they would consider an option of a short alternative route and without exception everybody said they understand our concerns and would prefer our suggested alternative route.
•Worried about the isolated random walker or temperamental dog that may cause some reason to be concerned. Even though it is unlikely that any of these people or dogs would harm our children it is of course a risk we would prefer not to take.
17. Devon
•Parish Council decide to add a footpath spur in 1950 between a cottage and its pig house. The County Council admit in 2009 they have no evidence of this footpath spur yet they allow it. We decide to get this footpath spur closed by the correct channels – what a mistake.
•The public right of way over the original footpath cannot be extinguished by neglect of duty arising from an administration error in 1950.
•A judgement in Simms & Burrows 1981 made it clear the s53 of the WCA 1981 allowed both for the addition or upgrading of rights of way on the discovery of new evidence, and for the downgrading or deletion. This judgement stated that there was no provision in the 1981 Act specifically empowering the local authority to create a right of way by continuing to show it on the map, after proof had become available that it never existed.
•Devon County Council are seeking to enforce their order for costs by way of a charge and the sale of the cottage. We have appealed for a Direction to DEFRA for the second time.
18. Surrey
•The local Council decided 10 years ago that they put the footpaths and bridle way in the wrong place (according to their maps) 25 years ago when the motorway went through the middle of our family farm and home.
•They say the bridleway should go through our private gated courtyard/garden, through a building that was there from 1800-1990, and up a steep slope. They also say the footpaths should go on the new concrete farm roads and our main drive and not on the edge of the fields where they put it with signage.
•They have almost agreed to change the maps to what they say is the “incorrect” routes put in 25 years ago but only if we agree to the footpaths being 2M wide and the bridleway 4M wide, which is far wider that stated in the Countryside and Rights of Way Act 2000. They also want all the stiles removed and wide gates put in.
•The bridleway currently goes through a very busy farmyard and next to buildings, with lots of machinery and vehicle movement. We have asked to divert this away through the field for safety and security; this is currently being rejected as they say this will make the route slightly longer and through pasture. The objection being that the new route would be 17Meters longer and the track surface through a field rather than through our concrete farm yard.
•The Council tried to remove a locked gate on our boundary to the motorway saying that it is obstructing walkers…but the Council put in the stile next to the gate over 25years ago for walkers. The locked gate is needed for security of the perimeter of the farm (and containing livestock).
•We have various security issues with people found wandering about in our farm yard, and barns saying they are “lost”. Recently a group of people arrived taking photographs of our vehicles, buildings, farm machinery in the farm yard implying they were going to post them online for the public to see, and we cannot do anything to stop them. They even took pictures of our son’s play area.
•Children woken by walkers and runners shouting late at night, frightened.
19. Essex
•Footpath comes in front drive and through garden between the family home and garage. It comes within 3 feet of the house, as one might expect from a footpath which was obviously originally created for the benefit of residents and visitors to the house enabling access to the village, school, church, shops etc and neighbouring farms.
•Despite the fact that there has been an entrance gate separating the house and garden from what was once the farmyard for considerably longer than the 28 years we have lived here, the council officers are insisting that the gate is an obstruction and should be removed. Without a gate, effectively this means we cannot allow our family dogs out in to our own garden as they would quickly run off to explore the countryside.
•It also means that our young grandchildren cannot be left alone in the garden for fear of wandering off or abduction.
•There is no scope for diversion as the neighbouring farmer does not want a diversion on his land. In law the council have the power to divert the footpath anyway but their preferred method is to tell us that the gate must be removed and dogs locked up 24/7.
•I've received letters from the council threatening that failure to remove the gate can incur fines of £250 per day, the council can then remove the gate and recover the costs from us. Additionally the family dogs can be destroyed and I can be fined £5,000 or sentenced to six months in prison.
•As we are in an out of the way spot the footpath is actually used extremely infrequently (less than 6 times per year), walkers are invariably polite (often uncomfortable about coming through our garden) and access is freely available, yet still the council officers insist on persecuting us.
•The costs of legal advice around this complex, arcane and outdated area of the law is crucifying. The worry, stress and damage to health that this causes is incalculable.
•The damage to one's life and the removal of the ability to live normally in one's own home is a draconian abuse of power by council officers seemingly unable to employ common sense and is something nobody should have to go through.
•It doesn't feel as though we live in England, it feels more like Russia where our home could be confiscated at any moment.
20. Worcestershire
•The bridle-path runs up our drive and straight past our house, then through our outbuildings/garage/barn. Despite what we were told when be bought the property, there are plenty of people who use this path, walkers, riders, cyclists. I personally think it is an odd mentality of anyone who wants to use a footpath that is right through someone’s house/garden, either nosey or inconsiderate but I guess that is subjective.
•We have had people lean over fences into patches of woodland and leave piles of bottles and cans. We have had people sit on the wall outside the house to look around/ have a drink etc. We have had people sitting on benches in areas near to but not on the footpath, to have a picnic.