Get off my land

6 Apr 2010News

The activity on my bank account will sound familiar to many. There is a fleeting moment each month when it looks healthy, followed by a whole host of direct debits which whittle the balance away until I am back to the economy drive position of grumpily and hurriedly making sandwiches at home while already running late each morning in a bid to stave off the overdraft until next pay day.

The activity on my bank account will sound familiar to many. There is a fleeting moment each month when it looks healthy, followed by a whole host of direct debits which whittle the balance away until I am back to the economy drive position of grumpily and hurriedly making sandwiches at home while already running late each morning in a bid to stave off the overdraft until next pay day.

On occasion I am asked to confront the numbers in black and white by my husband, who loves his spreadsheets and takes responsibility for our household finances. We then consider the nature of these many outgoings and whether any of them are disposable frivolities. The answer is always negative.

First, there are those payments which keep a roof over our heads with heating, lights and running water. Pretty important then. The next large category is insurance '“ for everything including the cat. Some policies are obviously not optional, such as those for the cars, where allowing others to lapse would essentially be gambling and if you'd seen the gay abandon with which our cat crosses busy roads you wouldn't be feeling lucky.

Private medical insurance is a benefit offered by both my and my husband's employers, and our children are covered on his policy at no extra cost. Having never before made a claim, two members of my family have had cause to use the insurance in recent months '“ one of them being our two-year-old. It was obviously not a pleasant experience but the speed with which we had access to a consultant meant that it was not in any way prolonged and the early peace of mind afforded was invaluable.

At the last count we had three travel insurance policies which came as freebies through various sources, meaning that they don't add to the dreaded outgoings. That is also the case with the legal expenses insurance which is thrown in with many household insurance policies. I may shortly need to have my first taste of that as the potential to become embroiled in a delightful legal battle with the local council looks ever more likely.

~~Road wars~~

I've been having to cast my mind back to university and law school as words like 'prescriptive easements' have been bandied around in increasingly feisty emails and the battle lines are drawn. My house came several years ago complete with an unprepossessing unadopted road down its side which leads to allotments and the local park. On the far side of the park is a primary school which the council has just received planning permission to double in size. There is no existing access to the school across the park, but the council owns the park and can therefore do what it likes with that land.

The staff and parental route to the school is a beautifully smooth Tarmaced road, a far cry from our pothole-ridden option, but apparently health and safety have cautioned against going that way because of the road's incline and two right-angled bends which the heavy traffic would need to negotiate. It's dangerous, apparently. Quite.

It's all quite irritating, as we took the trouble to read the many dull planning applications and reapplications when they were being tabled last year, and raised our valid concerns and objections in writing within the relevant deadlines. I even bothered to ring the head of legal at the council to ask why nobody had been in touch even though we'd read that our road was being considered as one of the two possible routes for construction traffic. There followed a deafening silence until a couple of weeks back when a casual email dropped into my inbox asking me to call the planning team who then popped over to see me with a legal representative and asked if I would sign a licence to let construction vehicles rumble up and down right next to my home from 9am until 3.30pm Monday to Friday for an estimated 18 months'¦ starting next week! Words almost failed me, but I did manage to say 'no, thank you'.

I'm now seeking the expert advice of colleagues at work, one of whom kindly labelled me Mrs Nimby because of what he perceives to be my not-in-my-back-yard approach. I managed to rise above that one but it will be no laughing matter if I have to dust off that previously irrelevant-seeming policy in the near future.

Several years ago, one of my husband's colleagues had categorised gap insurance on his leased car as a low priority, despite it having been factory built to his specification by the obliging people at BMW and thus his pride and joy. He learned some new priorities in a harsh way when he kindly lent the now month-old car to another colleague who noted that it was low on fuel. He had a near identical car himself save for one very important exception. His ran on petrol, this one was diesel. One big mistake later and the car turned into a fireball as it accelerated to rejoin the motorway. He miraculously escaped without injury but the same cannot be said of the car. It was a lesson in both taking insurance risks '“ this one was expensive '“ and differing fuel ignition points.