To contact highways agency to push people into action?

[Sokmonsta]

We live in a small village with narrow pavements. It's enough of a struggle negotiating some paths with the double buggy and two walking children without having to battle inconsiderate parking, wheelie bins and overgrown hedges and brambles from people's gardens. I'm not the only person in the village to have complained and these are people with single buggies or just walking children/pets. With lorries thundering through, none of us really want to be forced to walk in the road. We've tried the polite but direct route, someone has written an impassioned plea in the village newsletter and others have written individually to the householders in question. The school is tackling the issue of parents parking on paths near them as there is also a particularly large and lethal bramble bush spilling out of a garden on into the path nearby. By and large the nice requests are ignored.

So I've contacted the council to find out what I can do. They suggest contacting the highways agency who will write giving them the option to take care of the obstruction themselves, and failing reasonable effort being made, will do the work and bill the householder.

I don't want to make too many waves as its a small village, but the village garden club has offered their assistance, time and tools for free and is being ignored. I'm all for a 'natural environment' but when my children are at risk of harm from a stray branch or bramble, I feel I also need to take a stand.

So in the same situation, would you risk costing someone money, when all other reasonable and free offers of assistance have been dismissed or ignored?

Take the Council's advice and contact the Highways Agency (if they are in charfge of the road).

We have residential gardens spilling onto the pavements (leylandii among them) with some bits of Council owned land having overspilling bushes, too. The Council bushes were dealt with quickly because it's a local authority road. I thought the Highways Agency dealt with only arterial A roads and motorways.

I would take on the offer of the garden club to go out at night to cut down the residential interloping shrubberies. We do that here sometimes.

Over grown vegetation annoys me too and I often contact the council about overgrown footpaths.

I also sometimes take loppers with me on the school run and chop annoying vegetation myself

Its the council that is the problem in our village, to save money they're not pruning the hedges. No one can see the 30mph signs and you cannot walk on the pavement.

Many homeowners have done what they can, we each do a little more than our own property, but most of use don't have the tools for what is a big job.

Have the parish council got any funds they could devote to sorting out the shrubbery? Would a fundraiser be an option? If you had the funds you could assign a team to sort everything. We have a lot of commuters in our village and they tend to play hard at weekends (don't blame them) but would put in a few quid to hire someone to do the work required.