Resident's Complaint About Ball Games On Village Green Ends In Boundary Survey
A written request that children stop playing football near a house on a village green has produced a petition, two resignations from the parish council and a £1,150 boundary survey, which reported last week.
News Intro
A parish council in south Worcestershire has received the findings of a boundary survey of its village green, four months after a resident wrote to ask whether children could be prevented from playing football on the green outside his house.
The original complaint, a three-page email sent to the parish clerk on June 9, was accompanied by a log of incidents and six photographs. It asked whether "organised ball games" were a permitted use of the green and proposed that a notice be displayed.
In the period since, the village of around 900 people has produced a petition of 212 signatures, a community play afternoon attended by around 150 people, a second village WhatsApp group, and two resignations from a parish council that had not previously had a contested vote in six years.
The survey itself was commissioned at the resident's request. The report was delivered to the council last Tuesday.
How It Developed
At its July meeting the parish council voted four to three to put up a temporary notice asking that ball games not take place within ten metres of any property boundary, pending a survey of the green. The notice was cable-tied to a post on July 21.
It was removed overnight on two occasions and replaced on both.
On Sunday August 2 a group of parents held what they called a "Big Play" on the green, with picnic blankets, two sets of portable goalposts and a rounders match. A petition asking the council to withdraw the notice opened the same afternoon.
A smaller group, supporting what its members described as "considerate use", formed shortly afterwards. It has 19 members.
The September meeting was moved from the parish office to the village hall to accommodate around 140 residents. A police community support officer attended. The council chair, who had cast the deciding vote in July, resigned the following week. A second councillor resigned citing "the tone of the messages".
The Resident's Account
I asked the parish council one reasonable question and now half the village won't speak to me
I spent 34 years in local authority highways, so I am used to people being upset about decisions they have not read. I would just ask that people read this before they decide.
I am not against children. I have three grandchildren. I played on a green myself. What I asked about was a specific use of a specific area at specific times, which is a different thing, and I did put that in the email.
We moved here in March last year. The green was one of the reasons. Last summer I took out the old hedge at the front, which was half dead, and put up a proper close-board fence, six foot, concreted posts. It was the first thing I did.
From late April this year I started keeping a note. Between April 27 and June 7 a ball struck the fence or the car 23 times. Eleven of those were after 7.30 in the evening. The latest was 8.52pm. I am not exaggerating any of that, it is all written down with times, and I photographed the marks on the panels.
I did not go out and shout at anybody. I did what you are supposed to do, which is put it in writing to the people responsible.
On the balls. Some have said I "confiscated" them. When a ball came over, I kept it in the garage until somebody came to ask for it. Nobody did. By the end of August there were eleven. I brought every one of them to the September meeting in a bag and handed them over, and I would like that remembered as well.
I did not ask for a sign. I suggested one. The council voted for it. I did not organise anything in response to the Big Play, which I think we all know was organised in response to me, and I have never been in either WhatsApp group, although I am told what is said in both.
I was the one who said the ten metres needed measuring properly. If you are going to have a rule, you have to know where the line is, otherwise it is just people pointing. I offered to pay half of the survey and I paid it. £575.
The survey has raised a separate matter about my fence, which I am dealing with directly with the clerk and is not really relevant to the question I asked.
What I would say is this. I raised one question, politely, with evidence. I have since been called things outside the post office that I won't repeat. My wife has stopped going to the fete committee. And at no point has anybody answered the actual question.
What The Survey Found
The survey, carried out on September 22 by a chartered land surveyor and paid for jointly by the parish council and the resident, mapped the registered extent of the green against the deeds of the adjoining properties.
It found that the resident's front fence stands 1.4 metres beyond his title boundary, across the full width of his frontage, on land registered as part of the village green. The previous hedge, the report noted, had been planted on the correct line.
The parish clerk confirmed that the council has written to the resident asking that the fence be moved back to the boundary. She said the resident had replied promptly and constructively, and had agreed to move the fence on condition that the ten-metre exclusion was then measured from its new position.
The notice has been taken down while the council considers the survey.
The Legal Position
The structure of this dispute is familiar from much larger ones. One party seeks a buffer zone along a line it has drawn itself, the other party contests the buffer, and both sides call for an independent survey on the assumption that it will vindicate them. Surveys tend to be indifferent to that assumption. Here the boundary everyone was arguing about turned out to have been moved before the argument began, and the party that moved it is the party that asked for it to be measured. I would describe his proposed settlement as a withdrawal in exchange for recognition of the original claim.
Conduct Of The Dispute
What strikes me is how rarely anyone spoke to anyone. A ball came over the fence and was kept rather than handed back. A concern was put in writing to a council rather than to the parents twenty metres away. The parents replied with an event rather than a knock on the door. By September there were two WhatsApp groups and 140 people in a hall, and still nobody had stood on the green together and discussed where the ball should go.
A View From The Lineside
On the railway the boundary fence is surveyed before it goes in, not after the first complaint. Lineside fencing is inspected on a fixed cycle and the position of every post is recorded. Nobody puts six foot of close-board up along a running line on the strength of where the old hedge looked like it ought to have been.
Village Reaction
Lorraine · Lives on the green · 188 reactions · Saturday
So the balls were landing on the green. Because that's where his fence is. I'm going to need a minute.
Phil · Under-9s parent · 96 reactions · Saturday
The hedge stopped balls for about twenty years. Nobody ever needed a log.
Margaret · Considerate use group · 71 reactions · Saturday
To be fair to him the 8.52pm one was out of order. Some of us do go to bed. The fence business is a separate thing and I wish people would stop mixing the two.
Dave · Village hall committee · 54 reactions · Saturday
Does anyone know if the village hall is booked for the October meeting or is it back in the parish office? Asking for the chairs.
Sian · Signed the petition · 133 reactions · Sunday
He kept eleven footballs for three months and wants credit for bringing them back in a bag.
Tom · Lives off the green · 39 reactions · Sunday
Village greens are registered under specific legislation and you can't generally enclose any part of them, whatever your deeds say. That's probably why the council wrote so quickly. Not sure the ten metres was ever enforceable either, for what it's worth.
Lorraine · Lives on the green · 102 reactions · Sunday
He's agreed to move it as long as the ten metres starts from the new one. He genuinely thinks that's the compromise.
Jen · New to the village · 17 reactions · Sunday
We only moved here in August. Is it always like this?
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