There are some questions you don’t expect to ask your solicitor.
This morning I asked mine whether I should even have my house on the market.
Welcome to Part III.
For anyone joining the Cornwall Fucking Council cinematic universe late, the story so far is relatively simple.
Cornwall Council says we’ve obstructed public footpaths across our property.
We say we haven’t.
Their Definitive Map says one thing.
The physical world says another.
In Part I, The Map Is Wrong. Please Change Reality, I wrote about being told we needed to pay £3,500 to divert footpaths we hadn’t diverted.
In Part II, Apparently My Porch Has Moved, things became even more surreal when aerial imagery being used as evidence appeared not to accurately represent the physical layout of the property.
So we did what any reasonable people would do.
We investigated.
And that’s where Part III begins.
There’s the fucking stile
One of the disputed footpaths is shown on the Definitive Map entering our private back garden.
We’ve always maintained that it didn’t.
We already had an Ordnance Survey map surveyed in 1875 supporting the route we’ve always understood to be the footpath.
But we’ve since found more.
A historical description from 1951 describes the route:
“entering field (by stile) continuing through second field.”
Interesting.
Because on 21 June 2010, the day we completed the purchase of the property, we took photographs.
And in those photographs is a substantial stone stile.
Right where the historical evidence says the footpath entered the field.
There’s the fucking stile.
It wasn’t something we’d built.
It wasn’t something we’d moved.
It was sitting there when we bought the property sixteen years ago.
We’ve since removed the stile because dogs had an annoying habit of reaching our courtyard before their owners.
But the gate beside it is still there.
And that’s still where the footpath enters the field.
So now we have an 1875 map.
A 1951 description referring specifically to a stile.
And a photograph from 2010 showing the fucking stile.
This is becoming rather more difficult to dismiss as me not knowing where the footpath outside my own house goes.
Then there are the other two
Because we now have three footpaths being questioned.
One appears to be a historical discrepancy between the Definitive Map and what has existed physically for a very long time.
The other two are considerably simpler.
They haven’t fucking moved.
One runs alongside a building reconstructed from a ruin.
We’ve found photographs from before the reconstruction.
There’s the route.
We’ve got photographs afterwards.
There’s the route.
It’s still there today.
The third runs along another building to a gate at the boundary of our private curtilage.
There’s the route.
There’s the gate.
The gate works.
People can walk the public footpath.
There is no recorded public right of way continuing through the private curtilage beyond it.
So we’re now in the slightly bizarre position of defending ourselves against an allegation that we’ve obstructed three public footpaths when our response to all three is essentially:
Show us the obstruction.
So come and look
This was how I ended the last article.
Come to the property.
Look at it.
We have photographs.
We have historical maps.
We have historical descriptions.
We have old planning drawings.
We have physical features that still exist.
We have the actual fucking footpaths.
We’ve repeatedly invited Cornwall Council to come and inspect them.
They haven’t.
We have, however, been offered the opportunity for somebody to attend as part of the formal process we’d have to pay for to alter the paths.
Which rather misses the point.
I’m not asking somebody to come and tell me how to divert a footpath.
I’m asking them to establish whether I’ve fucking diverted one.
Those are not the same question.
The map is the legal record
Cornwall Council’s latest response explains that the Definitive Map and Statement are the legal record of public rights of way.
I don’t dispute that.
They’ve explained that historical maps, photographs and routes used on the ground don’t themselves alter that legal record.
I don’t dispute that either.
But none of that answers the question I’ve been asking since August.
What exactly did we do that obstructed these footpaths?
Because there’s an important difference between:
A landowner has obstructed a public footpath.
and:
A historical legal record may not correspond accurately with the route that has existed on the ground for generations.
If the Definitive Map is wrong, there is a legal process for correcting it.
Fine.
Let’s investigate that.
But I still don’t understand how an error that potentially predates my ownership of the property by decades becomes evidence that I obstructed the path.
Nobody has explained that.
And now it matters
Until now, this has mostly been an infuriating bureaucratic argument.
Unfortunately, it has acquired consequences.
We originally applied for the planning permission that started all this because we were selling the property.
That sale subsequently fell through.
The house is now back on the market.
But the planning permission Cornwall Council eventually granted contains a statement saying the public rights of way are obstructed and diversion orders will be required.
Which means I’ve now got a new problem.
Suppose somebody offers to buy the house tomorrow.
We disclose the planning permission.
Their solicitor reads it.
Cornwall Council says three public rights of way are obstructed.
We say they aren’t.
Cornwall Council says diversion orders are required.
We say there is nothing to divert.
And somewhere around that point I imagine the buyer asks the perfectly reasonable question:
What the fuck am I buying?
So this morning I emailed our solicitor.
Not to ask where the footpaths are.
Not to ask whether the Definitive Map is correct.
Not even to ask how much it would cost to make this all go away.
I asked:
Should we even have the house on the market while this remains unresolved?
And that is the point at which Cornwall Fucking Council stopped being quite so funny.
Part IV
We’re now making a formal complaint.
Not because I expect the complaints department to redraw a Definitive Map.
Not because historical evidence automatically overrides a legal record.
And not because I expect somebody at Cornwall Council to accept my version of events because I can swear more convincingly than they can.
I want somebody independent of what’s happened so far to look at the evidence.
I want somebody to come to the property.
I want somebody to identify the alleged obstructions.
And if we’ve actually obstructed something, show me.
I’ll deal with it.
But if we haven’t, I’d quite like Cornwall Council to stop officially saying that we have.
Because apparently the question is no longer simply where a fucking footpath goes.
It’s whether I can sell my house.
Cornwall Fucking Council IV is presumably already in production.
I don’t know what it’s about yet.
But based on current release schedules, I wouldn’t expect to wait long.