I’m no fan of Parish Councils, believing them to be little
people drunk on what little power they have.
In a village near where I live, with its own Parish Council,
a row of terrace houses face onto a main trunk road. With nowhere to park their
cars the occupants, quite sensibly, parked on a wide grass verge fronting the
houses.
Until the Parish Council exercised their little power by
erecting a row of bollards along the verge, preventing the cars using it and
forcing their owners to park on the very busy road, with all the dangers inherent
in such a move.
I was reminded of this exercise of petty power when reading
of how the Queen Thorne Parish Council in Devon erected a fence
behind houses backing onto a public park, so blocking one house’s gate leading
from the garden to the park.
Despite this particular house having a right-of-way onto the
park from the garden the Parish Council of Queen Thorne pursued a three year
legal battle, at a reported cost to the Council of £14,121, twice their annual
budget, before throwing in the towel on the eve of the Court hearing and
removing the fence.
Not that this appalling waste of public money did anything to
lead the Parish Council to regret its action, their Vice-Chairman Rodger Dodd
is reported to have said that the gate in question had been put up “in a provocative
manner”!
A ‘provocative’ gate, now there’s a thing I’d like to see.
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