Possible purchase of council owned land next to property anyone got any experience of this.

ProDave

That's a good call re planning.  Strictly speaking as well as buying the land you would need planning permission for change of use from whatever it is now, to "garden ground"  That is a separate issue and needs addressing.  Once the legal team have agreed to selling the land, you might want to make the purchase of the land subject to getting planning permission for change of use, and submit a planning application before you complete the purchase?

Or buy it, use it as garden and hope nobody objects.

TallGirl

Some really good thought really helpful thank you so much. The actual wall has a curve not two straight lines.  There is a rose, a climber and a huge pampas grass planted in that space so I wonder if it was the developers way of making it look nicer.  Still odd that they previous people only bought that little triangle. As for access to the pylon there is access from the other side and I am just looking to straighten the line up so it should not narrow the path or the access. 

Need to work out how to send the council the measurements thinking of using the land registry documents rather than try and get out there with a tape measure. Should be fun. 

theartfullodger

Why would council wish to sell at anything less than a high price, even if they have no other plans for using it?

Doesn't matter why you want to buy, why would council, please?

TallGirl

Replied to the email saying I wish to use it as a garden. Size worked out roughly like this but I could got for a smaller piece. I measured it using the scale on the land registry with the scale ruler. 

I'll keep you all posted. Might help someone else. 

jimbog

Any RoW show up on this?
https://www.rowmaps.com/showmap.php?place=New York&map=Bing&lat=52.8224&lon=1.43289&lonew=W

Bendy_House

TallGirl said:

Replied to the email saying I wish to use it as a garden. Size worked out roughly like this but I could got for a smaller piece. I measured it using the scale on the land registry with the scale ruler. 

I'll keep you all posted. Might help someone else. 

Good luck, TG, and it'll certainly be interesting to see how this develops.

silvercar

I would contact your local councillor sooner rather than later. It may focus the mind of the council official dealing with it. He/ she won’t want to cause problems if none are justified.

TallGirl

It was a no not going to take it any further I can see their reasons there are many other properties backing onto this plot although mine is the only one with a weird shape. 

The Public Spaces Operations Manager has confirmed that the land isn’t considered to be surplus to requirement and he wouldn’t want to set a precedent for selling off any of the buffer strip. There will  also have been an obligation on the developer to provide a certain amount of open space as part of the planning permission for the development and so it would be unlikely planning permission for change of use would be granted either

Section62

silvercar said:

I would contact your local councillor sooner rather than later. It may focus the mind of the council official dealing with it. He/ she won’t want to cause problems if none are justified.

As a general rule I'd advise against getting a councillor involved in a situation where you want to purchase council-owned asset such as land.

There is a risk of their intervention being seen as seeking to facilitate an individual (or business) acquiring publicly owned property, with the potential for allegations of undue influence.

The council officer dealing with a potential land sale who is approached by a councillor may feel obliged to report that to the council's monitoring officer - which, whilst there would not necessarily be any inpropriety in the involvement, may result in the sale coming under more scrutiny than is desirable.

Rather than focussing the mind of the officer, it may well be very distracting to them instead.  There could also be a slightly increased risk of a 'no' response, because by not selling the land it would ensure that any hint of potential wrongdoing would be avoided.