Council House Gardens.

I live in a council house

We have a chain-link fence down one side of our garden and a bought fence on a wall on the other side.

We are sandwiched between two really good neighbors who are in bought property. I want to make it clear, that neither of us has any issues with our neighbors. We like them, and we are great friends.

We have a tenancy agreement for our council property, and we are not allowed to take the fence down and replace it with a new fence, without permission from the council.

According to the government, there is no record of who owns the fence!

One of my lovely neighbors has a garage that is on their boundary, but recently there was confusion because the tenant before did not mark the boundary with a wall or a fence because he ran out of materials to build it.

It only took a friendly talk today, to be able to talk about this.

I let my neighbors into my garden to maintain their fence on my side, and their garage because they don't have access any other way.

However, my other neighbors want to build a fence of their own, but they only have little space to do so because their garden sits on a ledge, and our council fence is very close to it.

They have decided to try, but it would be easier for me to ask the council to take the fence down.

So, here is the problem.

We adore our new friends, and they are always trying to support and help us in our garden which is difficult to maintain.

We'd like to return the favor, but recently that proved frustrating because there are council rules on our tenancy which are a little different to those on a mortgaged house.

We know we can get permission to put a new fence on our boundary, but we'd like ours taken down to give our neighbors more space to build their fence.

However, getting hold of the right department at BCP who are our council has proven fruitless, because we have Disability Adaptations going on at our home, and everything I seem to send them gets redirected to the O.T. involved, even though this is not their job to deal with.

Allow me to give some background information.

When we were first given the house some nineteen years ago, the house was not in a good order or state of decoration. The garden had been tidied, but the back garden was only tidied so far back. Our garden corners and that corner was hidden by another fence and bramble.

I took that down when I realized a portion of the garden was behind that fence. The council originally thought it was spare land, but it turns out that it was indeed the corner of our garden.

When I dealt with that corner, it was a mess.

There was a massively overgrown bramble jungle, bracken, garden waste, and soil piled high there.

There was a portion of our fence missing, which separated our garden from the ex-neighbors.

We are still sorting it out today even though our council promised to help. Now we are left with bare solid soil, which covers stone, mesh, brick, slate, old membrane, and even a grid that was buried in our garden running from the neighbor's garage.

Our Tenancy agreement states we are responsible for tidying our gardens,

I get that, and both of us try to manage our garden.

However, we shouldn't be responsible for the mess left behind by past tenants!

We live in a property deemed suitable for the disabled and elderly tenants under council rules.

My husband is registered disabled, but he is not 75 yet, and neither are we.

The help we could get for our garden is unavailable to us because it is only available to those over 75.

This is a bit unfair since my husband has also been declared medically unfit to move to another property.

I manage some parts of my garden, but I can't afford the extortionate professional prices to get a professional to manage the rest.

I could also manage my front side garden if it wasn't for the bramble and extremely overgrown trees that have grown in between the stumps the council has left in.

Look, some people are in council housing because they have difficulties, and not everyone has the skill to manage the complications that come with it.

Why are vulnerable council tenants being treated like those with a mortgage?

If we could afford or manage a bought house, we would not be in council housing in the first place.

Isn't it time that the right help was going to the right people, instead of this discrimination game?

The right help to those who try to manage their properties.

Maybe its time for councils to reprioritize their tenancy agreements.