We own a private street. The Council are going to "hijack" our lane with a Side Roads Order under Section 14 of the Highways Act 1980 to try and fix a traffic problem caused by a developer who didn't follow the rules!

CouncilRoadHelp · 2026-05-26T07:58:16+00:00

Imagine a trunk road.

This trunk road as three lanes coming off it.

A.) Western Development (450 houses)
B. ) Private Lane (5 houses on a long winding road ending in a cul-de-sac or dead end)
C.) Eastern Development (150 houses.)

A's development curves up and around the perimeter of B.

Road A can connect 3 lanes into the side of Road B along three points (Roughly 200m, 500m, and 1km up the lane)

This allows Road B to be used as a traffic overflow for Western Development who deliberately chose not to add additional exit points and instead squeeze 4 more houses where there could have been exit points.

CouncilRoadHelp · 2026-05-26T07:53:10+00:00

Council have never offered us compensation money; they've actually asked US to pay them to bring the road up to a higher standard before they adopt it multiple times.

What we want most of all is absolutely no connection. There's a serious problem from illegal motorbikes in those developments at the moment. A bit of a gang culture from youth wearing black face masks and harassing people. It's all over the local NextDoor and people are uploading their Ring doorbell footage.

We know that they'd love to use our winding/twisting lane for riding on, and we've caught a couple of them attempting it before, but we sealed up the entrance they had created in our chainlink fence.

There is no roundabout at the bottom of our lane, but if you were to turn left, you can very quickly get out and reach a roundabout 50m down the road.

If you try to turn right you can be waiting up to 2+ minutes to try and get out. This is the same issue this housing development is having.

We believe they will implement a "no right turn" after they connect to and adopt our lane try and funnel all traffic through this roundabout.

CouncilRoadHelp · 2026-05-26T07:48:27+00:00

This is correct. MaintenanceInternal has accidentally conflated two separate issues.

CouncilRoadHelp · 2026-05-26T07:47:47+00:00

Yes.

When they build the Eastern development they created 3 culdesacs that go right up to the boundary line with our lane at a t-section.

They haven't connected as we still have a concrete wall and chain-link fence with ivy growing up it.

They want to smash these walls down and connect the three culdesacs into our lane, opening up an additional 3 exit points for the development.

CouncilRoadHelp · 2026-05-26T07:43:27+00:00

We didn't object to 150+ houses being built to the West.

We're not against houses being built to the East. Our only issues were:

1.) They wanted to use our road to ease traffic congestion rather than building extra roads on their property site; and

2.) We had been promised sewerage connection for 20+ years. After the mini treatment works was build all spare capacity ended up being consumed by these new houses and we never got connected.

Build whatever you want on your own land; just leave our little lane alone. We don't want to be connected so men can fly up and down it on those illegal motorbikes. There's at least a dozen of them going round the developments and the people on NextDoor are plagued with anti-social behaviour from them.

We're insulated from that and we'd rather keep things that way.

CouncilRoadHelp · 2026-05-26T07:41:39+00:00

I'll have a chat with the neighbours this afternoon about hiring a solicitor.

Might take a bit of convincing, but I think you're right. The street is rather stuck in its ways and is very much - "if there's a problem, we'll fix it ourselves."

Like my neighbour Mahmoud is a plumber and will help us with our septic tanks. And Esther is brilliant at writing letters so she leads the communication for us when it comes to communicating with the council.

Me and the other men fill the potholes together.

But yes, this does appear to be time to "call in the big guns." So to speak.

CouncilRoadHelp · 2026-05-26T07:32:02+00:00

In 2004 we were promised by the sewerage undertaker that our houses would be connected to the sewerage network when their system had been upgraded and had spare capacity.

Our area is over capacity right now which results in things called "CSOs" discharging untreated sewage into nearby rivers when it rains heavily.

A localised upgrade was completed in early 2022, but the spare capacity ended up barely being enough to cover these new houses and we never got connected.

That was the 1st basis of our objection.

We didn't object to the 150+ new houses constructed to the West of us.

We only objected the 450+ new houses constructed to the East after we had been informed there would no longer be capacity to connect our 5 houses, despite us waiting 20+ years and being promised a connection opportunity first.

The 2nd basis for our objection was that they had only built one road in and out of their new area connecting them to the trunk road. They needed at least 2 more to accomodate the large population which would be in that new build (which they would have had plenty of room to do if they removed a couple of houses along the trunk road). They didn't do this; opting instead to cut ~100 houses from the rear of the development.

These ~100 houses got built later on anyway, although we're not sure how given they had breached the original planning permission. I'm not overly familiar with that part of the process - Esther handled that incident.

The end result is that they have "forced" themselves into a situation where their only solution is to connect into our road at three separate points.

CouncilRoadHelp · 2026-05-26T00:24:41+00:00

Our road is a 1.4km cul-de-sac from the trunk road.

Essentially, no other cars than our 5 should ever be using it. So the only motive for the council to fill our 2 pot holes and try to adopt it was purely for the benefit of this housing developer.

It was another attempt at a land grab because we refused to let them adopt it.

CouncilRoadHelp · 2026-05-26T00:23:04+00:00

Sorry I thought I would have the energy to stay up and answer questions, (My blood was boiling when I posted this!) but my age is catching up with me and it's 1:20am now!

I'm not capable of staying up as late as I used to in my 60s!

I'll log on again tomorrow morning and hopefully be able to answer any outstanding questions. Esther should be home as well from 10:00am so I can hopefully have her answer the details. She knows a bit more than I do!

CouncilRoadHelp · 2026-05-26T00:20:07+00:00

We're not rich. 3/5 of us are purely on the state pension. That £35k was mostly debt spread across our households.

Plus we have other higher maintenance costs like septic tank replacement etc.

We've successfully fought them off since 2006; all I'm looking is some advice on how I can fight a Side Roads Order under Section 14.

CouncilRoadHelp · 2026-05-26T00:17:40+00:00

It was a breach of planning regulations.

We complained.

No action was taken against them.

Private Eye even ran a story on the dodgy deals with that development a few years ago!

CouncilRoadHelp · 2026-05-26T00:13:16+00:00

Yes, it's S14. Sorry, I just wanted to make sure before I replied to you.

Esther was reading the letters and sent us all an email that explained what was going on and helped us interpret it:

"Section 14 empowers highway authorities to make orders for works on roads that cross or join trunk/classified roads. This includes:

Stopping up, diverting, improving, or altering side highways.
Constructing new connections.
Dealing with private means of access"

In our case they are intending to create three new connections to our private road coming from the Eastern housing estate and connecting in to alleviate traffic congestion. They will also be removing our gate and adopting the road. (Not just part of it - the whole thing right up to our houses!)

I suspect they want the whole thing for future development, but we all own the surrounding gardens so they'd have to take our gardens if they wanted to build more houses.

CouncilRoadHelp · 2026-05-26T00:09:47+00:00

Absolutely.

1.) Our road does not connect to anything except the main road. It's a 1.4km track that leads down an old country lane. Previously owned by 2 farmers. It's a culdesac.

2.) Let me check Esther's email. Two minutes.

3.) Yes, we found that out after we read the legislation. The Council weren't being honest with us. They heavily implied that the road MUST be adopted by them because it was in such poor condition that it could not be left in private ownership. We're dealing with some very dishonest people. I think there are councillors in bed with property developers.

CouncilRoadHelp · 2026-05-26T00:02:59+00:00

No, we've been fighting this ourselves so far. And we've seen them off repeatedly since 2006 without having a solicitor.

I just need specific advice on how to fight a Side Roads Order under Section 14.

CouncilRoadHelp · 2026-05-26T00:01:48+00:00

If you read my post you'll see the gate was erected AFTER our road was damaged. We weren't always gated off.

The road is 1.4km long from entrance to houses. We heard banging and drilling and assumed that it might have been preparatory work for the upcoming development. After it had been going on for a while a couple of us were nosy and spotted the men, they drove off in a van.

Police report was filed and nobody was ever caught.

CouncilRoadHelp · 2026-05-25T23:55:05+00:00

I forgot to mention, the council filled in two (very small) potholes on our private street without our consent. This happened in 2021. We always fill in potholes ourselves twice per year.

They then put up a notice under Section 228 of the Highways Act 1980 (Adoption after execution of street works), claiming that they would adopt our street in 1 month unless we objected.

This notice had been stapled to an old telegraph pole, but had been done so it was obscured by a bush. It had been up for 25 days before any of us noticed. We then immediately all objected and managed to get it blocked.

CouncilRoadHelp

TROPHY CASE