Monthly Silly Saturday

This is the first Saturday of the month – and therefore a day for some silliness in memory of blipper Admirer, who started the Silly Saturday challenge and ran it for almost 4 years.

Regular followers of my journal may remember a Silly Saturday blip I posted in March - see here. A silly drunk driver had somehow managed to direct his Mini head on into this wall, even though it’s on the inside of a bend!

Well the wall lay in ruins, as seen on the previous blip, for many weeks but recently a contractor was asked to remove the debris and replace the damaged brick wall with a fence.

End of story? – Oh no. This is a conservation area and therefore there are quite strict rules as to what can and can’t be done.  Local residents have not been best pleased that the rather impressive, curved brick wall has been replaced by a very plain, basic fence. Representations were made to the local councillors and to the planning department, whose response was to agree that planning permission should have been requested for a change such as this. However, this was based not on its general appearance, but on the fact this it was over 1 metre in height.

Can you guess what silliness ensued? (I did.) A week or so later the contractor came back and cut the fence down to 1 metre. Not quite what the local residents had hoped for.

That’s still not the end of the story. A resident has measured the fence and finds that it’s still 1.04 metres high. So that has been reported back to the council, along with a quote from the national guidelines for conservation areas: “Repairs should be considered as the preferred option, with replacement only where it would enhance the character or appearance of the conservation area. Historically correct solutions should be adopted, using appropriate design, materials and construction methods to match the original”.

Hopefully the wall will be rebuilt, but I’m not holding my breath. The wall belongs to a block of flats run by Karbon Homes, one of the largest housing associations in the northeast. No doubt cost is the issue (unsurprisingly the offending drunk driver was uninsured but I’m surprised that Karbon don’t have adequate insurance to cover the repair).

All very silly. I bet Admirer would have loved to have heard the story!

Silly Saturday is kindly hosted this month by KangaZu. (Sorry KangaZu, I didn't spot your suggestions until too late!)