If your garden hedge if overgrowing the highway and causing a nuisance, Kent County Council can order you to cut it back, or do the work themselves and send you the bill.

But it seems that when the boot is on the other foot, the authority can be very slow to act, as Vanessa McCloud from Tonbridge discovered.

Mrs McCloud moved into her home in Darwin Drive seven years ago.

In 2017, she became exasperated at the height of hedge and foliage on the other side of her 80ft garden boundary which was beginning to push out the fence panels.

It was a struggle to find out who was responsible for the maintenance of the hedge, both Taylor Wimpey, who own the field next door, and Tonbridge and Malling council who maintain the nearby Frog Bridge Play Area denied responsibility, but eventually Kent Highways put up their hand and said it was theirs.

They came along and trimmed a section of the greenery.

Two years later and the problem had re-appeared, so in July 2019, Mrs McCloud began again the process of persuading Kent Highways - who in the meantime seemed to have lost the record of its being theirs to maintain - to come out again.

It has taken 17 months of patiently exchanging emails with the council before on December 17 last year, Aubrey Furner, KCC's arboriculture manager for highways, transportation and waste, finally told Mrs McCloud that he had placed the work with a contractor and the offending greenery should be removed by the end of next month (February).

Now Mrs McCloud has another problem. Some of her fence panels have already been pushed in by the tree growth, and she fears more will be damaged when the council comes to remove the greenery.

KCC declined to repair the damaged fencing and suggested she make a claim against their insurers.

She did this is July 2020, and six months later, on January 6 this year, she was told her claim had been rejected because "the primary reason for the failure of the front and rear fence sections results from a lack of maintenance, old age and wear/tear."

Furthermore, they said: "It is also clear the damage claimed occurred sometime ago."

Mrs McCloud said: "Anyone can see the hedge has pushed the panels in, and to say I haven't maintained it is ridiculous - I haven't been able to get to it to maintain it because of their hedge!"

Now Mrs McCloud is in a quandary. She has waited years for the council to cut down the greenery, but now she's afraid that when they do so in February her fence will come down leaving her with no protection.

She said: "I can't have that. Not only would my property be insecure, but my seven-year-old black labrador Evie would be able to escape."

Mrs McCloud said she would bite the bullet and just pay for the fence repairs herself, but her business as an English foreign language teacher collapsed in February last year when Covid stopped her students from coming, Since then she has had no income.

A KCC spokesman said: “We visited Mrs McCloud late last year after she suggested damage to her boundary fence was caused by a hedge owned and maintained by Kent County Council.

"Upon inspection, Mrs McCloud’s fence was found to be old and heavily weathered and hence it was not considered that the adjacent KCC-owned hedge had any adverse impact on its condition.

"We have agreed to remove the hedge to assist maintenance in the future.

"This will involve removing the hedge roots, for the full length of the boundary fence alongside digging up saplings adjacent to the side of her house."

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