[Allan Carr]

At the bottom of our garden is a drive to what used to be an old manor house, now converted into apartments. Lining this drive on both sides and right up against our fence (and that of 5 other neighbours) is a large Leylandii hedge. When I first moved in 22 years ago, these damn trees were 50 feet high and stretched 10 feet over our garden. After a lot of petitioning by all the people affected by these trees, the residents committee of the apartments agreed to cut them back to 20 feet high and we could then cut them back to the boundary from our gardens.

However, a new committee has now taken over and they have decided that cutting these trees is an unwarranted expense for them and some residents want the 'extra privacy' afforded by letting these trees grow to their full potential. The damned things grow about 6 feet every year!

One of our neighbours (not affected by these trees) is a local councillor and got one of the officers to come and have a look at the situation but he said that it was not enough of a nuisance to be covered by the recent act pertaining to problem hedges.

So the situation is that we can cut these things back as far as the boundary (it currently takes 2 days work three or four times a year - time that could be better spent diving) but we are not allowed to cut the tops. The rate that these things grow it will soon be impossible with normal ladders to cut back the higher reaches and apparently, due to access (you can't get a cherry picker into the back gardens), it would cost in excess of £500 a time per house to have them trimmed by tree surgeons. Hence we have the prospect of having to abandon a large area of our garden to these damned trees since nothing will grow in their rain shadow.

I was trimming the trees a few weeks ago when one of the residents, who claims he is a barrister tackled me with an angry 'What the hell do you think you are doing?' When I said that I was only doing what the law allowed me to do in order to preserve access to my garden, he said that he didn't give a f*** about my garden and that if I cut off an inch too much anywhere, he would have great delight in suing me for every penny that I had.

Is it any wonder that there are incidents of hedge rage?