On Sat, 26 Feb 2011 20:04:43 -0000, rbel wrote:


We have a planted area between our boundary wall and the pavement, about
3m x 40m. It used to be managed by the developer and was then taken over
by the local authority when the road was adopted. The problem is that the
LA no longer have the funds or resources to look after the area and it has
been getting somewhat neglected. We have started to tidy it up .... snipped

Before you go and spend money on a lot of plants, have you got the
permission of the local authority (probably its highways department)
to do what you are doing? There have been cases where someone has done
something to a verge area and the council jobsworths have gone
ballistic on the basis that they'd have even more work to do if
whoever had done the work moved away, died or was no longer capable of
tending the area. It's not unheard of for someone from the council to
turn up just after the work's been finished and dig the lot up!

A friend was actually threatened with legal action by his local
council if he didn't stop cutting the grass on the verge outside his
front hedge because the council hadn't insured him to do it! It took a
couple of months to get the council to accept that he owned the verge!

Mr Cameron doesn't yet seem to have managed to join the dots in his
"Big Society" plan.