Grass patches on pavement turning into mud - council won't do anything

DiddyDavies

The problem with putting in a post or bollard yourself is that if there is any sort of accident involving a vehicle, cyclist or pedestrian, you would leave yourself wide open to claims for damages or personal injury.

theoretica

Have you asked the council or a local councillor what you and neighbours can do? 

sevenhills

Put some pebbles or even paving stones to stop it getting muddy. Some have done that close to where I live. Grass verges where cars and vans park look awfull at the moment.

A small bag of pebbles/stones will cost arould £5, you can get hardcore for free if you collect.

valuehuntress

gabbro86 said:

Hi all,
I am not completely sure this is the best place to post this, I apologise in advance if it isn't.
The pavement in front of my and my neighbour's house has two little patches of grass, that basically from October to May become two little patches of mud due to cars/vans/lorries driving over them. See pictures I've taken this morning...

Both my neighbour and I have been e-mailing/calling the council to ask them to do something about this (anything!), as we had instances in the past of vans getting stuck in the mud and then spraying it all over our cars parked in the driveway and even on the house fronts! Council always replies they won't do anything about it.
Neighbour planted small steel poles in the ground, to stop cars from going on it, but someone from the council promptly came round asking him to remove them, or they'd do it themselves and slap him with a fine.
Has anyone here ever had a similar issue? Is there anything at all we can do about this?

You can't plant small steel poles.

As others have said, white painted rocks usually work.

ic

Talk to your local councillors - they can lobby for improvements and may have access to discretionary budgets which council staff on the helplines don't have access to.  I find my local councillors are responsive over email, and always like to do things they can stand in front of for a photo that can go into their next leaflet drop - "you asked and we fixed...".

daveyjp

The only solution is to lay flagstones.  The Council however don't have to do it as the issue is a first world problem.

littleboo

Its a shame, grass verges are a nice feature and something which you rarely see on todays new developments where sometimes not even pavements are provided. The downside is that once people start driving on them they quickly deteriorate. As mentioned above, hassle your Councillor.

gabbro86

Thanks everyone for your suggestions! I have just emailed my Councillor, hopefully they'll be able to help.

Slinky

Where we used to live the road was moved a bit to allow access into a new development. When the pavement was reinstated, there was a section of grass that everybody walked over when coming out of the park, rather than using the pavement, as the path wasn't a direct route. Like yours it got all muddy. After a couple of attempts to reseed and regrow the grass, the council bowed to the inevitable and arranged for the section to be tarmaced.

beaker141

Plant a few trees under cover of darkness and claim they self seeded ?