Aylesbury man starts petition after council demands he removes wall protecting his house

An Aylesbury man has started a petition challenging the council's decision demanding he removes the wall surrounding his home.

Ian Young of Barnsbury Avenue had his request to replace a hedge outside his home with a fenced wall, retrospectively refused by the Aylesbury Planning Committee.

The application was rejected in 2019, now Ian has been given an ultimatum by the council asking him to reveal his plans to have the fence removed.

Ian has arranged for a contractor to lower the wall to the permitted maximum height of one metre, but remains unhappy with the decision.

He sites other fencing and walls within his neighbourhood that are also above the one metre limit. The council says those other fences cannot be investigated as the limit for complaints has been passed and nobody lodged an official complaint against them within three years.

Ian says he never considered that he'd need council permission to build a wall around his front garden in the first place.

His understanding was that the wall he built was nowhere near as intrusive as the overgrown hedge it replaced.

Now Bucks Council wants it gone, the refusal document states: "By virtue of its materials, height and location on a corner plot, it would result in an overly dominant structure that fails to respect, and is thus unacceptably harmful to, the open character of the area and appears visually prominent within the streetscene, failing to respect the character and appearance of the locality."

Ian disputes this, stating that the previous hedge was more intrusive and two feet higher than the current structure.

At the time of writing, the petition has just passed the 100 signature mark and can be viewed here.

Ian has also been empowered by the response to the council's decision within his community. Comments on a local Facebook group show great support for Ian in his potentially doomed quest to keep the wall in tact.

One commenter called the council's decision an 'absolute joke', another told Ian his wall looked 'neat and fab', one said the fence had made it easier to exit Barnsbury Avenue without having to see over the hedge.

Ian says he will lose privacy by lowering his wall and is more likely to see rubbish thrown onto the property. He claims he regularly had to pick litter out of the hedge before he removed it.

Another motivation mentioned for removing the hedge in the first place was that it was overgrown and led to his wall being damaged and temporarily collapsing in one part, while he was on holiday.

Ian wrote in his petition: "There are hundreds may be thousands of more important issues they should be dealing with in and around Aylesbury.

"Many people local to us have suggested they would sign a petition to save the wall and stand up to the stupidity of the council. So here is your opportunity."