Talking about British values, this must qualify.
An entrepreneur has gambled his home on building a toll road after becoming frustrated at council delays in clearing a commuter route blocked by a landslip.
Mike Watts is charging motorists £2 per journey to use his bypass made from rolled chippings and avoid the closed section of the A431 between Bath and Bristol.
A landslip in February forced the closure of Kelston Road and, while Bath and North East Somerset Council said it has begun repairs costing £1.5million, the road is not due to re-open until Christmas.
The Kelston road was affected by the floods. Here we are in August and the local council still hasn’t fixed it, so an enterprising couple of chaps decide to sort the problem themselves. Good for them. Naturally, the council is unimpressed.
Bath and North East Somerset Council said it did not support the private road and warned motorists not to use it.
A council spokesman said: “We appreciate the difficulties that local residents have experienced since the emergency closure and work has started to deliver a permanent solution as quickly as possible, but will not encourage proposals that have not been proven to be safe or compliant with statutory requirements.
“The council has no details to confirm the toll road design meets safety standards and no evidence that insurances are in place for any member of the public who uses the private toll road.”
Well, yes, they would say that as it is a direct challenge to their authority – and health and safety is always the weapon of choice for the petty bureaucrat.
Y’know, one wonders however civilisation got where it did without all those rules and regulations and statutory requirements. It’s refreshing to see someone stand up to these people and to do something positive – and, hopefully make a tidy little profit into the bargain.
Ooh, LR! I see a little running theme emerging through some of your latest posts, i.e. I suspect that we’ll shortly see this private arrangement described as a “cost” (of whatever sum these chaps make from their tolls) to the Council – because they didn’t think of it first!
In a similar vein one chap detailed how he took his hone completely off gas and leccy grids for around 7k in total and some other bod provided the evidence that a council where he lived was looking to take a set of 10 homes off grid as an ‘experiment’ at a cost of 20K per home.
Councils truly are enemies of the people.
I see that Samizdata has picked up this story as well, although LR got there first. Some interesting comments over there I thought.
http://www.samizdata.net/2014/08/a-glorious-bit-of-capitalism/#comments
This bloke should be given an OBE. I hope he succeeds, and if the Council “enforcement” wonsk try to shut him down, I hope they’ll be subject to a massive popular campaign of support for him. The Council “enforcement” of developments without permission in my neck of the woods is extremely selective – in general it seems to apply only to people who have something to lose or without recourse to expensive lawyers – anyone else gets left alone – large supermarkets, showmen setting up permanent residence on agricultural land, mineral extraction firms breaching the conditions of their permission are all left alone……