New Petitions

Thank you for giving me the opportunity to tell you exactly what has happened to us over the past six years. I am a bit emotional talking about it, because we have been through hell with antisocial behaviour. We have been bullied not only by our local council but by the thugs who are responsible for the antisocial behaviour.We have a lane between our houses; my husband and I own one half of it and our next-door neighbours at number 107 own the other half. It is private land according to our title deeds and, as far as we are concerned, it is an extension of our garden. It is a bin access lane, which was probably used many years ago to provide access for the coalmen. We have stayed in our house for about 14 years. Eleven or 12 years ago it was absolutely fine, but then we started to get lots of thugs going up and down the lane drinking Buckfast and throwing bottles into our gardens, shouting, damaging our property and urinating against the side of our houses—you have no idea what we have had to put up with.After we had been away on holiday, we came back to find that our front window had been shot with an air rifle. It cost £1,000 to replace and it was not much fun having to get the money together. We told the council that we could not take any more and asked it to please help us and close our lane or put gates up to stop us having to suffer such behaviour in our own homes. We were visited by the access officer from East Renfrewshire Council, who told us that we could not put up a gate and that there was nothing that we could do, whether the lane is next to our house or not, because there are no exclusions in the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003. The officer told us that people drinking Buckfast are allowed to go up our path—they have the same right as everybody else. We were not getting any help.After about four years of letters being sent back and forward, we got a letter from the access officer's immediate manager, who told us that the problem was an antisocial behaviour problem, which was a police matter and had nothing to do with the council. We were told that the council was being victimised in all the letters that we had written and that we would have to deal with the police.We did deal with the police, who have been very helpful. They sent us a good letter, which helped us to win the case for putting gates up, albeit that we have to open them during the day to let people up and down the lane. The police have said that if we put gates up to prevent crime, they have to be lockable.I am asking the Parliament to ensure that the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 defines clearly the areas of urban land over which access rights cannot be exercised and that the definition includes private bin access lanes or similar areas of ground. If that would be too wide a definition, perhaps the act could be enhanced to include the right of owners to close rights of way where they have sustained a period of serious disamenity because of antisocial behaviour.My neighbour has collapsed four times with the stress of dealing with the council as well as the thugs. We did not take lightly the decision to put up the gates; one evening, 22 youths were in our lane causing mayhem. The gentleman at the back of our lane is 84 years of age. He is a Normandy veteran and thought that he could live in peace at his age, but he had his greenhouse broken 40 times by the thugs.The council accused us of exaggerating the antisocial behaviour and suggested that it was not happening, even though our community council and around 80 per cent of the community thought that the lane should be gated.We read in Friday's local newspaper that five boys have been charged with attempted murder, two of whom live in Stamperland in our area and have used our lane. That lets you see what we have had to put up with.When we put the gates up, we were terrified that something would happen to us because people were not going to get down the lane. However, as it turned out, the minute the gates went up, the antisocial behaviour stopped and we did not have any more bother after that.

I am a neighbour of Mrs Lochhead, and I witnessed some goings-on myself. It started off as low-level antisocial behaviour, but then it got serious. People were throwing Buckfast bottles to try to hit windows. They were urinating, breaking windows, shouting and swearing. I described it to the police one night as sounding like the Hellfire Club behind my house. I do not expect to have to live like that.There is an argument that the police should be called—oh, but they were. Mrs Lochhead did not mention it, but the police were called regularly. They were sick to the back teeth of going down our lane. All that anybody wanted to do was to restrict access to people who had a reasonable right to be there. The idea that the Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 states unconditionally that anybody can go anywhere at any time seems unreasonable, especially in an urban context.

We did not take the decision to put up the gate lightly and we applied for retrospective planning permission, which the council refused because the access officer said that that could not happen. We then appealed to the Scottish Executive, but the council did not give the full information to the reporter who carried out the first investigation so, because she did not have a full picture of the situation, we lost the appeal.As ordinary working people who have been through sheer hell in the past six years with the antisocial behaviour and the treatment from the council, we had to pay £15,000—£7,500 from me and £7,500 from my next-door neighbours—to fight the council and put up a gate to protect us in our own homes from antisocial behaviour. We are devastated. It has caused sleepless nights. We have had to take on extra work to pay for the appeal—how can a council be allowed to do that to people? It is dreadful, and I would not like to think that anyone else would have to go through the same.Not only that—the second reporter included in her report on 26 July that the paths are not suitable for people to walk on. They are certainly not suitable for disabled people. They are uneven and dangerous, and they are not really there for people to walk on. Even though she has said that, the council will not accept it, and it is trying to go in the back door, use the land reform law and make our path a core path.

I was at a meeting of the access forum at the local council, and what Mrs Lochhead is saying is that the lane in question is still on the draft core paths plan, as are loads of other urban lanes. These lanes are a metre wide—they are not wide lanes that you could easily get even a pram or bike along. They are thin, narrow lanes. They are uneven and surrounded by high fences.Reading the access code, we never believed that Parliament intended to cover our urban lanes when it was considering the legislation. I accept the point that my neighbours have won the planning appeal, but it has taken years and it has taken a lot out of them—and £15,000 in anybody's money is a lot.I have friends all over Scotland—for example, in Aberdeenshire, West Dunbartonshire and South Lanarkshire—who live in similar John Lawrence houses to ours but who are not having the same problems with their councils. There is a lack of uniformity in the application of the access code and the 2003 act. That is what I kept hitting my head against. I could not understand why the interpretation that was made by one council was so—"extreme" is not the word that I am looking for—adamant, while others seemed to be more fluid in their application of the legislation.

Honestly, I am devastated. Six years of our lives this has been going on.

It has caused us financial strain, but the council just laughs.

You are obviously a good mind-reader, because your question leads me to what I wanted to say. You have hit on the crux of the issue. Either we need the 2003 act to be altered, or we need specific guidance to be given to councils. There is a conflict. In Glasgow city centre, lanes are being gated, but East Renfrewshire Council says that lanes cannot be gated.I will give committee members some background information. The lanes that we are talking about are disused service tracks that run behind terraced houses. They were the way the coalmen and the binmen got in and out, but that ended years ago. It was a long time ago, and I am too young to remember—probably a bit like yourselves.

But you have got to try your best—and you are a bit younger than me as well.In Stamperland, there are 43 of those disused service tracks, and more than 50 per cent of them are blocked—either because they have been gated by the landowners, or because they have been allowed to become overgrown so that no one can go in. They have been blocked to stop neds going in, drinking their Buckfast, behaving antisocially and using the lanes as their dens before coming out to the street and causing mayhem. When the police arrived, the neds would go back into their dens. The lanes helped to perpetuate the behaviour.I moved into the area two years ago. I am a retired police sergeant, but I was shocked at having wall-to-wall Buckfast-drinking neds outside my house. When they ran away, they went into the lane behind my house, causing mayhem. I was shocked that their behaviour could not be dealt with. However, the community got together with the police. A number of strategies came together, one of which was to gate and block the lanes—residents had started to block lanes apart from the one on Randolph Drive.I had meetings with the access officer in East Renfrewshire Council. I was told that if people wanted to walk the west highland way, they should be able to start from behind my house—with their bottle of Buckfast. No one is going to do that. The Land Reform (Scotland) Act 2003 is a tremendous act—it is great for people to be able to walk across Farmer Giles's field. However, it is not great to apply that access in an urban setting. No one in their right mind is going to walk down the lane behind my house. As Jacqueline has explained, you cannot walk down it because you would fall all over the place. The lane is pitch black, so people are going to walk down the road, which is only 10ft away, has got streetlights and has got people on it. No one is going to go down the lane. The council is out of step. It is misinterpreting the legislation and is trying to use it as a hammer to beat people with. People have tried to come together to defeat antisocial behaviour, but we have been hamstrung while the neds have not.The land reform legislation is being misinterpreted. Something should be done to make councils realise that the act was not meant for settings such as these lanes but was meant for settings where people might want to use their rights of access to public rights of way. The advert shows people on horses and cycles. You would not get a horse down my lane; you are lucky if you can get a bin down it. It is not wide enough.

There is no easy answer or cure to this problem. However, the council's gambit seems always to have been that antisocial behaviour is a police problem. I suggest that it is a problem for everyone, including the council. Perhaps guidance should make it clear that if people are experiencing a sustained period of serious disamenity as a result of antisocial behaviour, councils can allow access to be blocked. After all, if we are talking about access, I do not think that you will find a team of Buckfast-drinking neds walking along the west highland way or up beside Farmer Giles's bull. They will be walking down my back lane, throwing bottles into my property, urinating and doing whatever else and then coming out and stabbing people.We need something that allows councils to differentiate on this matter and to say that this tremendous piece of legislation should be implemented—after all, people have a right of access—but people should not have access to a lane of less than a metre wide running behind the houses of others. Common sense must prevail. The council has got to say, "I know that we have the land reform legislation, but it was never meant to apply in these situations." I do not know what form of words we could use, but it should be something like, "Don't be silly; this is not what the act was meant for."

Yes. The relevant issues are ensuring private safety, crime prevention and a safe community and preventing antisocial behaviour instead of trying to cure things after the event. Imagine having to put up with this antisocial behaviour and finding that, every time you write to the council, it simply does not want to know and refuses to help. I actually got a letter from the director of services in the council saying that none of the staff would answer any more of my e-mails or telephone calls.The first time round, we laypeople took a long, long time putting our case together. The second time round, we had to pay out £15,000 before anyone would listen to us. That is simply not right. We are only ordinary people who want peace and quiet and privacy in our own home. We were not getting any of that. As far as the metre-wide path is concerned, the access code states that people should be careful when they walk up people's paths. I like walking in the country myself, and I know that people who use the code correctly respect others and do not damage their property. Neds neither care about nor respect property.Over and above that, when the gates went up, enforcement officers from East Renfrewshire Council appeared in cars at different times of the day to watch our lane and take photographs of our houses without telling us. Only recently, I met a new councillor who told me that the planning department is thinking of employing someone to ensure that our gates are open between 8 o'clock in the morning and 8 at night. After what we have been through, the department is now thinking of employing someone to spy on me. The council will not give up trying to make our path a core path by the back door, despite the fact that a Scottish Executive reporter has said, "This path is not suitable as a core path—look somewhere else."I appreciate this opportunity to tell the committee exactly what we have been through, because it has been dreadful.

I think that what Mrs Lochhead is really saying in response to Mr Harper's question is yes. When she asked the council why under the act she could not restrict access to her lane, she was told, "Go and ask the Parliament; it's not our problem. We are interpreting the act correctly. The path is to be left open. End of conversation." That is why we are here. The bottom line is that we want prescriptive guidance to be given to all local authorities.

The only people who use the lane are our immediate neighbours. Nobody else sets foot on our path. It was closed for two years before we made our second appeal on the enforcement notices, but it is open now. We have to get up at 8 o'clock in the morning, but anything is better than the gate being open all the time. We all take turns to open the gate. As you can appreciate, it is not easy. Not one person has used the path since we had a decision from the reporter. Nobody goes down there during the day because nobody in their right mind would use it except the thugs. We still fear that the thugs will come back during the day. They have not come back yet, but they kicked down another gate. The neds said, "East Renfrewshire Council said we've got the right to be up your path." That is what we are living with in Stamperland. It is terrible.

It is dreadful.

It was in the local paper.

This has been going on for six years. East Renfrewshire Council is putting the act into disrepute.

We would welcome anything that could be done.

Thank you.