Road sign on my land

[Scarftown]

Just come home from work to find a new road sign has been placed on my land. Should I have been given the heads up they were going to do it?

What does it say? Seems a bit odd that you weren’t asked for permission beforehand. Could it be a mistake?

I'm not sure they can do that! Is it definitely your land? And is it an official sign? You need to contact your highway authority - your local council if unitary or County Council if not.

It's in your field?
What does the sign say?

It says traffic calming zone and they have put one on the other side of the road too. But the one our side of the path is on the bit of grass next to our garden wall. The bit of grass is definitely ours and it has flowers and trees and some small bushes on it so doesn't look like a grass verge

When you say "next to our garden wall", do you mean in your garden or on the other side of the wall from your garden?

If you mean on the other side, check your house deeds. It:s quite possible that the boundary of your property is that garden wall and that the grassy strip on the other side of it, along the path, doesn't belong to you.

Our deeds state that the first metre after the road is for service use and can be accessed at any point. (I can’t remember the exact wording but that’s the basic gist)

coild yours be similar?

Best get my deeds out but pretty sure our boundary is where the grass meets the path. . Still would have been nice to get the heads up. Bit of a shock to come home too.

If it's definitely your land then contact your local highways office and ask them to move it off your land and onto the public highway.

Pretty certain it wont be your land. The council would be clued up on where they put their signs. Do the council not maintain this strip of land?

Do you maintain the land or do the council? Even if its technically yours you may come across a bit of a stumbling block of the council have been maintaining it for years.

Is it adopted land?
We have this on some of our land next to the road. It means something like 2m is adopted by highways agency so while we still own it we can't restrict access to it & they have to maintain it. Assume they could put road signs up if they wanted although that's never happened.

We maintain it. We are a new build estate but only been here 2 years, council haven't mowed it once. Definitely looks like ours on the deeds. I'll contact them tomorrow and just query it. The one across the road looks like to be on the edge of the property. Weirdly it says traffic calming. But there are no traffic calming measures on this street. Yet anyway.

Local highway authority to have powers to place traffic signs in private land, I can’t remember what section of the highways act it is. Sometimes necessary if there is no adjacent pavement for instance, but it’s polite to speak to residents first - I always did.

as others have suggested get in touch with them and ask.

Do you pay a service charge? I know they're a racket on new build estates to maintain certain areas that are communal but not under council control. But if it's on your land as per your deeds then I'd be ripping it out! Also need to know who put it up. May be the estate landowner not the council.