Hedgeline's Code of Practice This was prepared at the time the Government was preparing its advice pamphlet, around May 02. In its initial draft stage this was telling the helpless victim what to do rather than the grower.
New legislation from Hedgeline members point of view, Material prepared for address to London tree workers,
December 15, 2000.
Some details of Hedgeline's essentials for new law which need to be further stressed, following on from the DETR statements at that meeting, December 18th 2000
Very brief summary of hedge-victims' requirements from new legislation May 2001
Some thoughts on the subject of hedge tyranny (1998) | Why we need hedge controls(1999)
The DETR is now drafting the new Law. The following sums up what our members need from the New Legislation. The text was prepared by the President during December 2000, in response to requests by official bodies, for talks about Hedgeline's position on the details of new legislation.
It forms the basis of a address on the subject of Hedgeline's position with regard to the new legislation which will be given to the London Tree Officers on Friday 15th December.
This text aims to -
give consideration of the claims of the perpetrators of hedge nuisance Claims of the Perpetrators
.
give Hedgeline's views on whether all Hedges should be subject to reduction. Innocent Hedges Hedgeline grew out up in response to very real suffering and to a very real need
Contact for Media regarding this material - Clare
sum up various effects of hedge nuisance which we expect the new Law to do away with.
Effects of Hedge Nuisance
If no Hedgeline had been formed 1000s would still be suffering in isolation with no hope of any real understanding of their problems, let alone any hope of them being alleviated.
The hedges are the prime cause. Rarely is a hedge just one of many points of contention in a general neighbour squabble. many of our members would not see their neighbours if it were not for the hedge.
There are two main reasons for nuisance hedge growing and but in most cases we find a combination of the two..
The whole unfortunate scene rests on an unfair distribution of power and this is what we want the new law to do to redress the balance of power and set fair rules. The uncontrolled nuisance hedge can dominate one's home. It is ever encroaching, and it is out of ones control. For older people their home might be almost their whole world; for everyone their home is their security and their refuge. 1. Loss of Amenity
2. Damage
3. Unfair Demands
4. Stress and Adverse Effects on Health
5. Devaluation of Property
6. Loss of Mobility 7. Fraud and Blackmail, Vendetta, Plain BullyingThe neighbour wants absolute privacy.
The situation is one which often has escalated. The victim has asked for the hedge to be reduced.The neighbour has reduced it by a foot or two but as the hedge grows the victim has to keep making requests and the grower secure in his rights of property sees this as increasingly irritating and neighbour relations deteriorate.
Most people like fair rules and to know where they are. Policeman members tell us that 90% of the population are likely to respect any rules made by the Government and will probably just act on the new law without any enforcement being necessary.
Deprivation of light to houses and gardens.
Deprivation of sunlight
The nuisance-hedge can prevent a victim from growing the plants he wants to grow.
We have had many cases where branches the leyland trees were on the victims' windows.
We have had many cases where the victims have given up using their gardens because they had become so dank, dark and depressing and we have had cases where the victim has had to give up a specialised horticultural or a collection of plants which he had built up over the years interest.Damage to fences, drains, paths and buildings (subsidence)
The insurance companies rarely fight. They prefer to pay damage themselves though occasionally threaten taking away third party damage cover.
We have members with terrible subsidence, who are not insured because they could not afford the premium. In some areas it is not possible to get insurance against subsidence
Insurance companies monitor for 4 years before they even consider doing something about a subsiding house. Nuisance hedges impose heavy maintenance demands on the victim to defend his property from the 24 hour a day trespass of its branches and roots.
Untopped fast growing hedges can be grown, and left untopped and unmaintained, so that the burden of continual, often hazardous maintenance falls on a person, deriving no benefit from this hedge, and by law prevented from reducing its height.
Old ladies cannot possibly keep up with the growth made by leyland or grown out privet. They can not climb up stepladders twice a year or afford professional cutting back.
Even if they could they would only be chipping away at the edges', not able to improve the situation for themselves because in the case of the big tree hedges the actual height of the hedge would be ever increasing.The Hedges cause worry, stress, feelings of helplessness.
At worst they cause serious depression and an effect on health and
serious disruption of the pattern of victims' lives.
The worry this scenario causes is beyond belief. The growing hedges are uncontrollable encroaching threatening objects and they make peoples' lives a misery. As they increase in size these hedges play an ever more and more dominant role in the victims thoughts. They can cause extreme anxiety. The victim knows he must not touch a twig, on the other side of the boundary or he could be arrested for criminal damage or at best involved in a civil action. Many of our members are really frightened of their neighbours.
One victim wrote to Michael in late November 00, anonymously. I do not know what good this will do her apart from slightly relieving her feelings. She was terrified to give her name in case her neighbour found out she had been contacting us.
The letters and telephone calls are often harrowing The victims sometimes in tears. These are people completely at their wits end. People who work with the cases and talk to these people find the job emotionally draining.
Victims cannot move because their houses will not sell.
High hedges have and are being used for financial gain. To obtain property at a reduced price.
Cutting over the boundary has resulted in enormous financial loss.
Some leyland cypress hedges have been planted, beyond any doubt, in order to bully a victim.
There are bullies who grow hedges to exert power over neighbours. A foot high sapling that you can watch grow to sixty seventy feet and still growing is an easily obtained and exciting weapon. Sixty or seventy feet is required for no one's privacy but it can compensate an insecure person, make him feel important and powerful.
1. Criteria Capable of Identifying Nuisance Hedges
2. Mediation
3. Trained Local Government Officers
4. Teeth
5. Maintenance Enforcement
6. Consideration of the Needs of Small Gardens
7. Availability for All
8. Rights of the Individual Property Owner
i.e. hedges (of various species) which cause any of the problems mentioned in the previous section.
The criteria should identify problem hedges not immediately along the boundary.
One of our members neighbours received legal legal aid for her own defence and also for 75 % of the victim's costs. (21 thousand in all) She was ordered to remove her hedge. She then planted mature trees 2 metres from the boundary probably thinking this would be outside the scope of the new law,
Nevertheless it is in the interests of real hedge victims that initial criteria should be able to exclude frivolous complaints.
There should be every encouragement for neighbours to reach their own agreement or use mediation.
Mediation does not usually work in the present situation because it can only work where both parties are seeking to find a fair solution to a dispute. We feel that it will work when the alternative is compulsory reduction of a hedge. Many, many perpetrators of hedge nuisance in these circumstances will be only too keen to seek a compromise with their victim.
We are convinced that many many people will not even need mediation. The very existence of the law will make the perpetrators seek a compromise.
Able, if necessary, to exercise, subjective judgement at the 'hedgeface'.
In our view the trained local Government Officers are the obvious choice to enforce the law since they are local.
The less assertive victim needs a champion. He or she needs the intermediary to approach the neighbour. Many of the growers are bullies secure in their power.
We admit that France requires a civil action if their 2 metre law instituted in 1881 is to be enforced but the French are long used to the fact that they are not supposed to cause this kind of nuisance. Most ordinary people in this country do not see legal action as a possibility.
Hedgeline wholeheartedly backed measures to bring in an amendment to the 'The Environmental Protection Act 1990' which had it been implemented would have relied on the trained judgment of local council officers.
We know that many many tree officers and environmental officers will welcome the powers to do something about the plight of Hedge victims.
Some have told us so, have said that they are sick of receiving multitudes of justified complaints and being powerless to do anything about them.
Some have said that they are worried about the extra workload and about the extra expense their Councils will be involved in, but as previously mentions Hedgeline feels that the expense will diminish as the Law becomes well established.
If the nuisance-hedge grower will not act, after he has been given a set time to do so the law must provide means of enforcement, and penalties.
We would wish the grower to be given a reasonable time to cut the hedge and then for the hedge to be cut possibly leaving the remains for the grower to dispose of.
There should be effective channels for ensuring nuisance hedges are kept down by their owners after they have been identified and reduced.
If a fast growing hedge is decreed a nuisance under the new law and limited to 2 metres but required to be maintained only once a year, it could increase by 4 feet during that year making a hedge of over 10 feet; too high for the small garden. Once a year maintenance is therefore not enough for this type of hedge in this type of garden.
Two metres of hedge is regularly sufficient in a small suburban garden, and any greater height a clear nuisance.
Many people have by now heard of the monster Leyland Hedge, up to 65 feet and still growing. 60/ 65 feet is not uncommon. but it is not just the monsters. Urban crowding means that people are living on small plots very closely packed and whether because of this or for other reasons there seems to be an increasing desire to build walls and barriers. The slightly too large hedge can down the side of a garden can cut out all winter sunlight transform a tiny garden from a delightful patch of colourful flowers into a dank weedy patch and take away all the owners pleasure in the use of his garden and ruin his gardening hobby.
Everyone should have access to this law, whatever their means.
An individual should not be made to endure a nuisance hedge for some outside consideration, for example, if the hedge will be disfigured or killed by cutting, it should be the victim's decision to cut or leave alone.
1. We feel that the victims are the ones qualified to judge whether the hedge is causing them a nuisance.
2. Perpetrators will claim they need privacy.
Unfortunately, when people live in crowded cities, total privacy cannot be available to all, so no-one should be allowed more the basic 2 metres worth of privacy at his neighbour's expense.
3. Perpetrators will claim that a small house has been built too close to their boundaries.
This should not effect the issue of nuisance hedge control, as long as it is clearly a hedge we are dealing with.
4. We think that if a hedge is causing any nuisance of the kinds mentioned previously there should be little hesitation in limiting it to 2 metres unless the victim agrees to higher.
We will possibly have initial claim charges and certainly some kind of trained officer to sort out any malicious persons who wants a non-nuisance hedge removed for spiteful reasons.
England is characterised by its hedges and global warming, if nothing else, requires that we do not get rid of high-hedges unless failure to do so would be a gross injustice.
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Clare
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