We are taking the council to court and are acting as "Litigation friends" for a boy who at the time of the accident was aged 15 who used the edge of a back garden wall belonging to a council tenanted property to playfully jump down from a 18 inch high embankment wall to the pavement below which resulted in the wall collapsing on to his legs that were both broken during the accident.
The pavement in question that we feel is subject to the highway act and inspections runs from the pavement at the side of the public road that narrows to a footpath and swings around the side of the property and is made from concrete and extends some 40 meters along the boundary wall of the property and goes up steps before reaching the area of where the accident took place and the wall at the front of the property starts within two meters of the public road.
We requested highway inspection reports from the defendant and have been told that none are available because the land is not adopted but the council (Defendant) appear to own all the land in the area and had the side pavement and steps built over forty years ago to serve the general public’s right of way.
Without being an expert I would had assumed that the act of building a pavement on what might be common land in itself means that the land has been adopted by the council and they are responsible for inspections and repairs under section 167 of the highway act.
The wall itself at parts reaches about ten feet high and has been subject to over ten bob the builder repairs by the council over the years and sections of the wall falling down have been reported as vandalism so that a claim could be made for insurance by the council who now seemed to have put pressure on the elderly tenant of the property to shut up who previously had stated to ourselves “I don’t know why they don’t just knock the wall down and rebuild it”
Councils fight dirty we have found and will lead you up the garden path using litigation teams to delay any actions for years if you let them so hit them at an early stage with court papers because that’s the only way to stop them monkeying around.
The pavement in question that we feel is subject to the highway act and inspections runs from the pavement at the side of the public road that narrows to a footpath and swings around the side of the property and is made from concrete and extends some 40 meters along the boundary wall of the property and goes up steps before reaching the area of where the accident took place and the wall at the front of the property starts within two meters of the public road.
We requested highway inspection reports from the defendant and have been told that none are available because the land is not adopted but the council (Defendant) appear to own all the land in the area and had the side pavement and steps built over forty years ago to serve the general public’s right of way.
Without being an expert I would had assumed that the act of building a pavement on what might be common land in itself means that the land has been adopted by the council and they are responsible for inspections and repairs under section 167 of the highway act.
The wall itself at parts reaches about ten feet high and has been subject to over ten bob the builder repairs by the council over the years and sections of the wall falling down have been reported as vandalism so that a claim could be made for insurance by the council who now seemed to have put pressure on the elderly tenant of the property to shut up who previously had stated to ourselves “I don’t know why they don’t just knock the wall down and rebuild it”
Councils fight dirty we have found and will lead you up the garden path using litigation teams to delay any actions for years if you let them so hit them at an early stage with court papers because that’s the only way to stop them monkeying around.
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