It’s really time I started a new site to log all the idiotic things councils in the UK (and elsewhere?) do in the guise of upholding the law. Trouble is I’d do nothing all day but fill the site in as the floods of complaints pour in!
The latest in the long line of loonie council decisions was one affecting Joy Tracie who found a stray cat and wanted to reconnect it with its owners so put up a dozen laminated A5 posters with her telephone number on them to let the owners know the cat was safe with her.
Next thing that happens is instead of a relieved owner knocking her door, it was uniformed council patrolmen intent on enforcing the ‘fly-posting’ laws; specifically the “Town and Country Planning (Control of Advertisements) Regulations 1992, Clauses A, B and F”. It seems Tameside council didn’t care a hoot about the cat or it’s owner, they wanted the signs down or Joy would be prosecuted and receive a hefty fine.
Ok we all know how irritating fly-posting can be, but if responsible citizens post something innocuous about a lost pet *and* include their home phone number it’s not exactly the crime of the century is it?? In my opinion this is one of those cases where some common sense should have been applied. Perhaps they might have told Joy that, under the circumstances, the signs could stay for a week or two but if they weren’t removed after that then she might be liable for prosecution. But of course local councils possess neither common sense nor a sense of humour.
This heavy handed approach by local councils does nothing to endear them to the local residents who they are supposed to be representing and the petty enforcement of rules by overzealous officials is simply counter productive.
By the way the cat, called Copper, was reunited with its owners a few days ago,
The Eclectic Interweb 