Navigating Bradford Council's hedge maze

We have a lengthy hedge bordering the road outside our house. It is mixed hawthorn, leylandii, rambling rose, holly, ivy and laurel.  A bit untidy to some eyes, I suppose.

A neighbour complained about the ivy "creeping along the ground...getting exceedingly dangerous...someone will trip...an accident waiting to happen".

When Bradford Council ignored him (presumably because pavements are its responsibility), he repeated the complaint, but emphasised our "overhanging trees".

The lowest branches were more than 2.5 metres above the pavement, so the only people affected would be horse riders and giraffe walkers. But it gave the Council's Department of Place, Network Resilience and Management (more conveniently known as "Roads") an excuse to issue an instruction in late February to cut the hedge back to the boundary line.

Blackbirds, robins, pigeons and sparrows nest in the hedge most years, so in early April, once I was sure they were nesting, I informed the Council and received this stay of execution from LC, a Traffic Officer:

"Please could you NOT proceed the cutting operations, this can wait until the bird nesting season has ended."

The end of the nesting season is considered to be in late July.

Yet three weeks later, we were issued with a Section 154 Notice to Lop or Cut Hedge within 14 days, or else the Council would do the work themselves and charge us.

We could appeal, but only to the Magistrates Court, a process that would take at least 3 months and cost £138.  Meantime, the Council could carry on with its hedge destruction.

The conflicting instructions started me on the Council's complaints process.

Stage 1 was conducted by Lindsey Greenwood, who told me she was impartial when she phoned to introduce herself. But in her next sentence she said the Department of Place, Network Resilience and Management had acted correctly.  

The Department's Traffic and Enforcement Coordinator is Danny Stewart BSc EngTech FIHE. His social media pages tell us how pleased he is with himself and his enforcement gadgets.  And that he likes to have a laugh.  Who knew?

Greenwood passed my Complaint to Stewart, who sent me a quick email, writing [sic]: “I must apologise as its wasn’t made clear”.

He did not elaborate or say what "its" referred to.

There was no mention of his Traffic Officer's instruction to delay the hedge cutting for 3+ months.

But Lindsey Greenwood had already let the cat out of the bag - in her phone call she'd mentioned that the TO hadn't entered it into the System because she was “new to the job”.

It looked as if there was a severe shortage of coordination in the Traffic and Enforcement Coordination department.

But no shortage of menace: although the Section 154 Notice had expired "due to the time frame", Stewart threatened to reinstate it after a site visit in 2 weeks' time.

I complained about the way the complaint had been handled.

Greenwood passed matters back to Stewart as a sort of Stage 1-better-get-this-done-properly complaint.

In the more formal report Stewart issued, none of my complaints were upheld, except the one about delaying the hedge cutting until the end of the nesting season. This was [sic]: “party upheld”.

Apparently I was partly responsible for his department’s mistake, because “the service did not receive a response from you until the bird nesting season started”.

Well, I could hardly have told them birds were nesting before they started nesting.

Stage 2 of the complaints process was conducted by Joanne Billingsley.

She is employed by the Council, she said, but is completely independent.  Of course she is.

Her review appeared to be thorough, but relied heavily on Danny Stewart's input. There were no indications that she’d bothered to consult any sources other than him.

Remarkably, she allowed Stewart to add new evidence to her enquiry.

He declared that I should have known that hedges containing active nests can be cut if you take sufficient care using, for example, manual pruning tools.

He was, as you might say, winging it: there is no basis for this assertion in law or in any official guidance.

According to West Yorkshire Police: "It is an offence to cut down a hedge or tree intentionally or recklessly whilst there are birds nesting in it. If you cut the tree down ... and you didn't check [for nests], then you would have been reckless and therefore guilty of the offence.”

Billingsley did uphold my complaint about this additional evidence, but rejected all my other concerns.

So I sent a detailed maladministration complaint to the Local Government & Social Care Ombudsman.

It only took the LG&SCO’s Suzanne Eves 2 months to send me her conclusion.

Cutting through her procedural verbiage (with my trusty hedge trimmer) revealed this: "We will not investigate Mr X’s complaint because we are satisfied with the action the Council has already taken."

In other words, the LG&SCO pre-judged my complaint and shut it down.

As ombudsmen do.

Epilogue

The Council’s power play finally ended in July. For nearly 5 months it had to spend time and resources dealing with over 50 emails sent to various officials and representatives.

In June, we obeyed its legal order and cut our hedge. Carefully.

The hedge is now dead tidy.  (Leylandii doesn’t recover.)

The birds flew and are unlikely to return.

Conclusions

Council officials never admit to mistakes.

They exercise power bluntly and without discretion. Because they can.