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Garden nuisances
Find out how to complain about high hedges, report overgrown gardens or japanese knotweed, get advice on keeping chickens, and find out what actions we can take if a garden issue affects quality of life.
Overgrown gardens
Each year, the Environmental Health team receives about 200 complaints from residents about overgrown gardens. In the majority of cases, while the gardens may look untidy or unsightly, the council does not have any powers to require these overgrown gardens to be tidied. There is no standard that gardens need to meet and indeed one person's untidy garden can be another's nature reserve.
- if vegetation from overgrown gardens is encroaching over the property boundary it can be cut off by the affected property owner to the boundary line and passed back to the overgrown side.
- if vegetation is encroaching onto the pavement please report this to the council.
Environmental Health may be able to take action if an overgrown garden is providing harbourage for pests such as rats or mice, or if it is having a detrimental effect on the quality of life of those in the locality. This may involve vegetation clearance. Please note that foxes are not considered a pest. Residents are asked to make sure that their gardens do not provide potential harbourage for pests.