Suprisingly, later on Guy Smith happened to pass us by without stopping as we were actually working on the track levelling it - Not long after I'm glad to report that his brother - Phillip Smith came down to chat to us. Initially he said "don't you think you should have asked the owner first..." to which I said... we did... several times and had our letters delivered by recorded delivery totally ignored.
We asked Phillip if he objected to the work, to which Phillip said he had no objections, and was more worried that collectively other residents did not want the work done. Most of the issues here are between Andy and the Smiths, who ironically are distant relatives, so I was suprised to hear that my previous suggestions for myself to act as go-between had not been fed back to the Smiths, so I asked Phillip and Guy to liase with me in future as I'm quite reasonable and open to discussion and plain actions.
The Smith's opinions for "what residents want" of course could be deemed theoretically as not being a real collective opinion - the reality of this of course is that those residents who dissent are not impartial in their views due to their relationships with Smiths farm either by use of land or employment - which is obvious - after all, who wants to rock the boat. I explained this, and told Phillip that we were exercising our individual rights as set out in our deeds permitting us to widening the road and of unhindered access. Without going into reams of text in this entry - basically I went on to explain all the reasons in the previous posting on the website. Phillip seemed quite reasonable during this discussion, and I told him it was nice for us to finally hear it from them directly instead of rumours and chinese whispers fed via their network of neighbours who work for them!
I explained to Phillip that it was a shame that the Community service volunteers that we were trying to organise got blocked to help us do the work - He said he was unaware of what was going on being the reason for blocking it. We then asked him if he had no objections now he could see how beneficial the work would be for our community as it was a very unreasonable that now Andy and I were having to do all the work ourselves because of that decsion, and that they should reconsider their decision. Phillip then said he had no objections now, so I suggested if he could contact the person who called them and approve it. I will be contacting Phillip with the phone number of the Community service team leader so hopefully things will happen and finally we'll get some help and manpower!
Phillip actually commented how well we were doing the work, which was a pleasant surprise, so I thanked him and said our intention was to improve things for all of Lee-Over-Sands - not just for ourselves. I also explained that as we all have individual rights that the views of one or two residents should not adversely affect the rest.
Phillip also mentioned that over the next 10 years there could be issues with the water supply as the pipework is old and imperial fittings based, so this could become a future issue, should more faults develop, suggesting that we should start investigating alternative supply arrangements with a local water company.
I suggested that ideally we would form a residents committee in the near future to sort things like this out for all of us. And as we exchanged contact details, I re-iterated Andy's suggestion and said it would be a nice gesture for Smiths farm to offer to provide some materials to help us continue the work.
So all in all a good positive outcome. The Smiths seem happy with what we have done thusfar, and so do all the residents, apart from those that work for or have vested interests / favours with the landowners.
I think time will prove that this work is for everyone's benefit, and finally getting a chance to have a dialogue with the landowner directly gave Andy and I great satisfaction for future maintenance of our road.
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