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28 Mar 2003 : Column 621—continued
Richard Younger-Ross: On the problem of root damage, does my hon. Friend agree that occasionally cutting a high hedge down in clay soil may lead to clay heave? In Committee, we will have to address what happens if a hedge is removed and there is subsequent damage to a property or a retaining wall.
Mr. Foster: My hon. Friend is right—there are problems that need to be considered in detail. He will be aware that none of the remedies in the Bill necessarily require the removal of the hedge. Indeed, that is specifically excluded as an action that could be required by the local authority of an owner.
Sir Paul Beresford: I repeat that I am no expert on leylandii, but I understand that if a fairly tall leylandii is cut down to 2 m, the hedge is effectively killed—not removing it, but doing the next best thing.
Mr. Foster: The hon. Gentleman is right, and that is one reason why I referred to the point made by my hon. Friend the Member for Ludlow. The Bill has a number of details and implications that it would be right and sensible to address in Committee. Today, however, we
are ensuring that the Bill goes into Committee so that such issues can be discussed. I hope that in Committee we will have additional research to help us with some of the issues raised by the Bill. Emerging research, for example, demonstrates that because high hedges reduce light, they can have an impact on the passive solar heating of buildings, requiring some people to leave their heating on longer. Some estimates suggest that that costs the nation about £1 million, and perhaps more. Such a saving could go towards meeting the proposed cost of implementing the Bill.Many hon. Members wish to speak in our debate, so I shall conclude. The Bill is important—I have said the same of similar Bills that have come before the House. The Bill is a new, improved version of an earlier Bill, and Liberal Democrats wish it Godspeed.
1.28 pm
Mr. Ben Chapman (Wirral, South): I shall be brief. First, I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Pound) on introducing this important Bill in the House. It may be seen by some as slight and perhaps flippant, but it is far from it. It is not just, as has been said, Mr. and Mrs. Paul or, I suspect, the 203 Members of Parliament who have corresponded with my hon. Friend who have an interest in this matter. It affects many constituencies and many people across the country—it certainly affects my constituency. I am still dealing with correspondence going back to my arrival in the House at the end of the 1992 Parliament. The issue is very serious indeed, and is not, as has been said, just about cupressus leylandii, although that is the principal villain of the piece, growing 4 ft a year to a height of 100 ft. All high hedges are a problem. Not only do they cause bitter, long-running disputes between neighbours, damaging people's health and happiness, but they damage people's enjoyment of their gardens—one of the principal pleasures of our lives in the United Kingdom. A high hedge damages a garden by taking water, which is needed by other plants, away from the soil. It kills off other plants, damages the quality of the soil and forms an overarching mass that cuts out the light inside houses as well as in gardens. It is a serious problem and takes a great deal of pleasure out of people's everyday existence.
A high hedge can reduce house prices for people who are entirely innocent. The roots of the hedge get under other people's properties and gardens and can damage them. Building societies, which have experience of the problem, make it difficult to get a mortgage on a house alongside a high hedge. When selling a house, people have to state in the seller's declaration whether they have had a dispute with a neighbour. Such disputes merit a mention, because they are often long running and bitter. If a dispute is mentioned on the seller's declaration form, as often as not the sale will not go through, or the price of the property will be reduced. The poor soul who owns the house has no influence on that.
Laws limiting height and position apply to garden fences and walls, but not to hedges. There are laws bearing on all such structures, and hedges and trees are the only exceptions. We need to address that. Useful though it is, the guidance that has so far been provided by the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister, "Over the
Garden Hedge", has not to my knowledge led to the resolution of any particular dispute. The disputes that were going on when I entered Parliament are by and large still going on.It is important that we do not just provide tea and sympathy. We must provide a legislative framework—a procedure that must be cheap to administer and easy to enter into, without the costs and difficulties involved in civil action. It is important that we have an appropriate mechanism for mediation before action becomes necessary, hopefully bringing about an amicable resolution of the dispute. I congratulate my hon. Friend the Member for Ealing, North on an extremely important Bill, which has my support, and I hope the support of the whole House.
1.32 pm
Sir Paul Beresford (Mole Valley): With no disrespect to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker, I am rather disappointed that your colleague Sir Michael Lord is not in the Chair. In his previous guise, he was an expert on this matter and could straighten out any horticultural mistakes made by hon. Members in their speeches.
I congratulate the hon. Member for Ealing, North (Mr. Pound) on introducing his Bill. It is an important Bill, and I was pleased when it was announced. Half a dozen or so people have written to me or telephoned to tell me about their problems in relation to high hedges—not all of them leylandii; in some cases, we are talking about yew and other types of plant. Almost all the disputes are genuine and cause deep concern. I have one resident in Dorking who lives in an area that is rather like a canyon, because there are leylandii on both sides. The owners on either side will not do anything about it, and it is a pernicious and unpleasant problem.
Hedges and drains are the biggest problems in a rural and semi-rural area, and the disputes can be enormous. In most of them we have managed to negotiate a resolution by getting neighbours to talk to each other. I pay great credit to Surrey Mediation, which has done extremely well. I have grim memories of doing such work myself—having got the neighbours standing 200 yd apart at their front entrance or to one side of it, I walked up and down the road between them until I finally got agreement, making notes and getting both parties to sign them before we got something done. It worked. Why they had not done it themselves, I do not know.
I was delighted at the prospect of the Bill. I even got a copy of it, but I put it on my desk and did not read it. Then a gentleman came to one of my regular surgeries and his name rang a bell—an alarm bell. He came in to talk about hedges. I was vaguely prepared because he had hinted that his problem concerned leylandii hedges and I was aware that they could pose a problem. I mentioned the 6 ft-high one, and that I had seen another that was between 17 ft and 18 ft tall and 6 ft wide, well away from everybody, and the neighbours on all sides thought that it was fantastic and the owner of the hedge trimmed it once or twice a year and kept it well within control. There was no difficulty and that is what one would expect from any sensible, reasonable citizen, even in a fairly rural area.
I then had that gentleman in; or he came in to have me, so to speak. He wandered around the mulberry bush and finally came to the Bill, and he produced a photograph taken from his property, down his back yard, of a hedge about 20 ft long and 10 ft high—it was a broad property—on both sides and at the back, bordering on his three neighbours, and two beautiful trees. He had raised the issue with the local authority and the tree man who will be looking after hedges if the Bill is enacted went to see him, and he too thought that the trees were beautiful so he listed them, which I thought was right. I pointed out to the gentleman that there was no indication of shade, to which he said that he must have taken the photograph at the wrong time of day. I asked him if he was enjoying this and he said, "Oh yes, I am enjoying this, and when the Bill goes through I am going to have all my neighbours." The penny suddenly dropped.
The full regulatory impact assessment states that the objective is
- "To make hedge disputes a thing of the past by creating a mechanism that allows an impartial third party (local authorities), as a last resort, to determine these complaints."
Mr. Pound: There is a specific recognition in the Bill that the local authority has the power to strike out frivolous and vexatious complaints. Secondly, I refer the hon. Gentleman to the definition of a hedge, which is not one or two trees, but a continuous wall of evergreen deciduous growth, be it what it may. So the hon. Gentleman's constituent may be frustrated in his endeavours to annoy his neighbours.
Sir Paul Beresford: I thank the hon. Gentleman, but I think he was referring to evergreen, not deciduous, growth, and I shall come to that.
Mr. Pound: The hon. Gentleman is absolutely right.
Sir Paul Beresford: The point is that the gentleman recognised that the trees would stay, but he was going for the little bit of hedge, and if he had a little success there, I have no doubt that he would go to his neighbours on the other side. To illustrate the situation, one of the gentleman's neighbours is a lovely man who has made a lot of money and lives in a delightful house and each year he puts up Christmas lights. They do not particularly appeal to me, but the local people like them. They go past and smile, blink and wink, and the plastic Father Christmas is quite a stunning sight. But this year, they were not there, so I inquired why, and he said that his neighbour, the man who had come to my surgery, had complained, and that he spends his life complaining.
I sent the Bill to my two local authorities, Guildford and Mole Valley, and they passed it to the office that would be dealing with the matter, if and when it became law. They said that before they had looked at the Bill they were very much in favour of it but that, having looked at it they were desperately concerned because they feared being involved in the resulting ongoing disputes; that if there was a dispute they would be the jam in the sandwich. The officer would go down with his measuring tape and measure both sides and talk to both neighbours. Both neighbours would plead their cause,
one to leave the hedge alone and the other to cut it down, then the matter would go to a committee and there would be lobbying on both sides. The committee may ask for more negotiations, and it is nice to see provision for that in the Bill, so there would be more negotiations and more threats, and some of those, if not most of them would come back to the committee and there would be more lobbying. The Liberal councillors on one side of the hedge will support its being cut down and those on the other side will support its being left alone, and then in committee they will abstain.At the end of the day, however, the committee will decide. Knowing some people in my constituency who have encountered the problem, I think it likely that there will be an appeal. Often, in respect of the people whom I am trying to help, the existence of the hedge is the symptom of a neighbour dispute—in other words, it represents the fact that one neighbour is being vindictive to without reason. The position can then be turned the other way around and the neighbour without the hedge will triumph. The argument will then continue.
One of the reasons why I would have been intrigued if Sir Michael had been in the Chair—I mean no disrespect to you, Mr. Deputy Speaker—is that he is an expert on the matter and I happen to know personally that he dealt with such a problem in his previous professional life and was very successful. A lady who does not live in my constituency was being vindictively picked on by a very unpleasant neighbour. He had allowed his leylandii—I think that they were leylandii, but they could have been macrocarpa—to grow to 30 ft or 40 ft in height. By various means, the court decided—it did not do so at great expense—that they should come down. The last I heard is that the gentleman is now planting two rows of trees. The trees are separate, but they overlap, so that, when you stand well back, they appear to be a hedge, but when you come close, it is clear that there are two rows of trees. I understand that he is considering planting a copse if the Bill is enacted.
The argument will continue. The local authority will see that there are two separate rows of trees, which do not constitute a hedge, but the phrasing of the legislation might make it possible to get around that. However, if the gentleman turns the area into a copse, the argument will continue. Of course, that problem clearly does not apply in an urban area.
When the committee makes a decision—I should like a few answers about this—the matter will go to appeal, which will take six months, in addition to the initial one or two months. After those six months, an inspector will come and look at the site. The local authority will pay for that. Knowing what most of these people are like, I think that there will usually be an appeal. The matter will then go back to committee. Of course, the legislation allows the council to change its mind. On most occasions, it is a good idea that it should be able to change its mind, but what bothers me is that that will entail an awful lot of to-ing and fro-ing, although there might be some justice at the end.
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