Resident Reports Neighbour's Nightly Fox Feeding To Council Over Garden Disturbance
A five-month dispute over an 81-year-old widow's nightly dish of dog food has concluded with a council inspection, no enforcement action and a recommendation concerning the complainant's decking.
News Intro
A council environmental health team has confirmed that it will take no action over an 81-year-old resident's habit of leaving food out for foxes, following a five-month complaint by the man who lives next door.
The complaint, which included a handwritten log covering 71 consecutive nights, two letters, a call to the police non-emergency line and a copy of the council's own wildlife guidance delivered to five neighbouring houses, was closed in August after an officer inspected both gardens.
The officer found no statutory nuisance. Feeding wild foxes is not an offence.
The resident has since stopped feeding them anyway. Her neighbour says the situation has got worse.
The Complainant's Account
I reported my neighbour for feeding foxes every night. Before anybody else comments, here are the facts
I taught people to drive for thirty-one years, so I know what it looks like when someone has been told something politely and decided not to hear it.
Every night, somewhere between 10.10 and 10.25, the lady next door comes out of her back door in her dressing gown and puts a pie dish down on the path by our shared fence. Tinned dog food and the crusts off her sandwiches. She has done this, by her own account, for the best part of eight years. Within about twenty minutes her foxes arrive.
I laid my lawn in 2011. It was a good lawn. This spring it started coming up in holes, small ones at first, then ones you could turn an ankle in. There was mess on the patio most mornings. In January there was screaming at two o'clock in the morning that my wife thought was a person. A gardening glove went missing off the bench, and then one of my clogs.
I went round in March and said, quite pleasantly, that I thought the feeding was bringing them into the gardens. She said they were in the gardens anyway. I went round again in April and said it again. She offered me a cup of tea.
So in May I wrote to her. A proper letter, typed, nothing rude in it. I said I would rather we sorted it out between ourselves. She did not reply in writing, which I took as an answer.
People have picked up on the log. I kept it from the back bedroom window, which is the only window that sees the path. Time the dish went out, time the first fox arrived, how many, how long they stayed. Seventy-one nights in a row. I am not embarrassed by that. If you go to the council with a feeling, they do nothing. If you go with a record, they have to look at it.
The council took five weeks to acknowledge it. In the meantime I rang the non-emergency number, once, purely for guidance, and I have been told by several people on here that this was a step too far. Maybe it was one step further than it needed to be. They were very nice about it and said it was a council matter, which is what I had already been told by the council.
I also put the council's own leaflet through five doors on the close, because it says in black and white that feeding foxes can encourage them to lose their fear of people and cause problems for neighbours. I did not write the leaflet.
The officer came out in August. She was in Irene's garden for about four minutes and in mine for most of an hour. She said there was no nuisance she could act on. She also made some observations about my decking, which have been passed around the close, and which I do not think are the point.
The point is that you do not feed wild animals. You make them dependent and then everybody else has to live with what you've made.
And I would say that has now been proved. Irene stopped putting the dish out the week after the visit. I didn't ask her to stop at that stage, she just did. In the three weeks since, my food caddy has been turned over twice, there are four new holes in the lawn and something has been at the bin bags. Her foxes are clearly used to being fed at that time, and when they aren't, they come looking.
I am not asking anybody to take my side. I am asking people to look at the record.
What The Officer Found
The council's inspection note, which the complainant has shared with neighbours, records that the foxes on the close were not travelling to the gardens from elsewhere.
A family of foxes, consisting of an adult female and four cubs born this spring, had been living in an earth dug beneath the complainant's decking. The officer estimated that the earth had been occupied "for at least two breeding seasons". A gardening glove and a green clog were recovered from its entrance.
The note advised that the den should not be blocked while cubs might still be inside, and recommended a galvanised mesh skirt be fitted around the base of the decking once the family had dispersed in the autumn. It described the holes in the lawn as consistent with cubs learning to dig "in the immediate vicinity of their home".
The note made no recommendation about the pie dish.
Neighbour Relations
Both residents were behaving consistently with what they believed about the animals. He believed the foxes were visitors that she was attracting to the close. She believed they were residents who would be there regardless. Each time he escalated, he was building a stronger case for his own belief, and none of it required him to look under his own decking.
Assessed Damage
Most home policies exclude gradual damage caused by vermin or wild animals, and I would expect the decking to fall under that. The lawn is outside cover. The clog has been recovered. The animals causing his loss live at his address. They only eat at hers.
An Unrelated Observation
Railway embankments have supported foxes for a century without a single complaint reaching the timetable office. That's because the lineside fencing is specified, inspected and maintained. A mesh skirt is, in effect, lineside fencing. I would only observe that nobody inspected his for two breeding seasons.
On The Close
Pauline · Three doors down · 214 reactions · 2 days ago
I got the leaflet. I have never fed a fox in my life. I still don't know why I got the leaflet.
Gareth · Lives opposite · 188 reactions · 2 days ago
To be fair to him the screaming in January was horrendous. We all heard it. I just didn't think it was Irene's fault.
Lynne · Close resident · 301 reactions · 2 days ago
Two breeding seasons under his decking and he logged her garden every night.
Mohammed · Lives on the corner · 67 reactions · 1 day ago
Genuine question, can you actually fit the mesh now or do you have to wait until they've all gone? Ours had the same last year and I thought October was too early.
Gareth · Lives opposite · 42 reactions · 1 day ago
@Mohammed the note says once they've dispersed. Usually about now I think.
Barbara · Close resident · 96 reactions · 1 day ago
She's 81 and she's on her own and it was the only thing she went out into the garden for after ten o'clock. I hope everyone remembers that.
Dave · Close resident · 23 reactions · 20 hours ago
Dog food is actually fine for foxes, it's bread that's bad for them. The crusts might be the real issue here.
Steph · Next street over · 155 reactions · 9 hours ago
He's right that they're worse since she stopped though. Ours are on the bins every night now. Not saying he's right about the rest.
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Update
The complainant has confirmed that a mesh skirt will be fitted around the base of his decking this week, now that the cubs appear to have left.
Until the work is complete, he has written a second letter to his neighbour. It proposes that she resume feeding "at the far end of her garden, at a consistent time, on a managed basis", so that the foxes are no longer drawn to his bins.
He said this did not represent a change of position, because the arrangement would be temporary and documented.
She has not replied in writing.
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