‘Higgledypiggledy garden mess’

The gardens of Doncaster Grove, Long Eaton, which face onto an offshoot of the River Erewash. Photo by Eddie Bisknell.

A council has been accused of making a “higgledy-piggledy mess” over land it has told Derbyshire residents to buy, rent or have seized.

At an Erewash Borough Council meeting last week (Thursday, April 23rd), councillors discussed the ongoing issue of potentially seizing land used as gardens from 35 homeowners in Doncaster Grove, Long Eaton, after decades of private use.

A move from the opposition Conservative group, led by Cllr Wayne Major and supported by other groups, saw a vote urging the Labour leadership to reassess its offered options and instead allow all 35 homeowners to rent the garden space on a peppercorn rent of £25 per year, scrapping all ongoing purchase negotiations.

That rent would contain a clause saying that if the land was needed for the future building of Long Eaton flood defences then it would have to be vacated.

This vote passed with six votes for, five against and three abstentions.

However, committee chairman, Labour’s Cllr Frank Phillips, said he had “forgotten to vote”, so he had the vote retaken.

He chose to vote against the request to the authority’s Labour leadership, resulting in a tied vote, and then used his casting vote as chairman to reject it.

Cllr Major had told the meeting: “Bad luck, chair, you can’t just keep voting until you get it right.”

Following the meeting, Cllr Phillips told the Local Democracy Reporting Service: “I forgot to vote. When you are focusing on what is going on in front of you, you can forget to vote. Harry (Harry Atkinson, Erewash Mayor) muddied the water by saying different vote numbers than had been counted and that introduced doubt.

“I was unfairly excluded from the vote because I forgot to vote.”

The borough council’s constitution does not contain a clause for allowing a re-vote should there be a councillor who forgot, failed or chose not to vote and subsequently changed their mind.

The act of not voting is typically counted as an abstention.

Tom Haddock, the council’s head of property and leisure services, said the residents had been offered a fair and reasonable price for the plots, including factoring in flood risk and the market rate for garden space in the area.

Mr Haddock said the authority’s approach was “lawful, proportionate and fair”, allowing payment plans and the offer of leases.

Those leases, he confirmed, would not be for the current £25 a year which had been on offer but for 10 per cent of the sale value, with the £25 rate removed from the available options by Labour leadership.

He confirmed the council had been given the land by Broxtowe Borough Council for a nominal sum in 1995, not detailing the amount, but nodded when Cllr Major said this was likely either £1 or £10.

Cllr Major said: “The gardens are in flood zone three (highest risk of flooding) and saw substantial flooding in Storm Babet in 2023. Climate change is a real worry and those types of flood events will happen more and more in the future. We need to invest in the area with flood defences and losing this land could hamper our ability to build flood defences.

“They are all part of one land ownership now and we would be splitting it up into lots of individual residences.

“We are asking for huge sums of money, for land which we effectively got for free, and we are asking residents to pay for these parcels of land in the middle of the cost of living crisis.

“For us, this land is a liability and the cost of chasing these cases through the legal system is also a liability and I am very concerned about that.”

Mr Haddock said the next step, if residents did not agree to leases or purchases, would be to serve legal letters saying that homeowners must disclose land ownership issues if they were to sell their properties, including that the council owns half of the gardens.

Cllr Major said it would be “unfair” for the council to allow one neighbour to ignore the authority and neither pay or rent and yet keep the land, while others will have paid up to retain that right.

Mr Haddock said a third of homeowners had responded to either pay or rent and that this was an aim to “regularise” the situation.

Cllr Major said the situation could only be “regularised” if it was done so “equally”, “otherwise it is not fairness”.

He said: “I am immensely concerned. I think the council is shortsighted in terms of flood defences for Long Eaton, shortsighted in its willingness to enforce this and asking residents to pay £10,000 for the land is demonstrably over-valued.”

Cllr Steve Bilbie, Conservative, said: “The council has made a big higgledypiggledy mess here. The residents here are effectively squatting and Erewash is responsible to clear it.”

Danielle Hughes, the council’s head of law and governance, said the council was in advanced stages of agreeing purchases with some residents and that “it would be a long way down the line to reverse it”, but said councillors could recommend the peppercorn rent change.

Cllr Major said: “I think those residents would be chuffed, we would be saving them a massive problem. This really doesn’t look good. We are never going to stop hearing about this from residents. We need to recognise that this didn’t cost us anything and charge £25 per year.”

Mr Haddock said the council had an experienced officer assess the values of the land and that £140 per square metre was appropriate, but which has now been discounted heavily to a final offer of £50 per square metre.

Having a longer garden and more owned land adds significant value to the homes, he said, and this was reflected in the offer price.

He said residents refusing to purchase or rent the land were recommended to erect their own fences around their owned property.

The garden extension plots range from 30 to 70 square metres, plus one 200-square-metre lot.

This brings purchase offers to £1,500 for the 30-square-metre plots, £3,500 for the 70-square-metre plots, and £10,000 for the 200-square-metre plot.

The 10 per cent lease prices would be £150, £350 and £1,000 per year, respectively.

To date, two homeowners have said they do not wish to buy their plots but that a neighbour will be, three have agreed to buy them outright, two have agreed to buy but in phased payments, two have agreed to rent their lots and one property has been sold on Rightmove with the listing detailing that part of the rear garden is in council ownership.