Council stops retiree parking on her own drive
Ksenia Martin, a 55-year-old retired housing manager, had just spent £20,000 on a new drive when she discovered she'd wasted her savings - because the council has blocked all access to her drive forever. Now she's worried she'll be stranded in the property for good.
Martin moved into a semi-detached house in Clifton in Nottingham just three years ago, and splashed out a small fortune on paving and landscaping to make her front garden car-friendly and attractive. She knew at the time that she was going to be affected by the widening of the A453, but she didn't realised how dramatically she would be affected.
Stranded
In fact, The Nottingham Post has revealed there will be a new roundabout just a few yards from the front of her property, which will permanently block all access to her property by car. She told the paper: "There was a leaflet shoved through the door telling me I wouldn't be able to park on my drive because of the building works. I got in touch with the number on the leaflet to see how long the road would be shut for and I was told I wouldn't be able to use my driveway again."
The Highways Agency told The Sun that she had been provided with a permit to use a small car park instead next to her property instead, and they added that the impact of the scheme would have shown up in local searches done when she purchased the house.
However, Martin remains highly distressed. She put the house on the market in April but has yet to find a buyer. She added that people were interested in the property within a few days of it being on the market, but they pulled out when they realised the impact the roundabout would have on the home. Now she worries that she'll never find a buyer, and will be stranded in the house forever.
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Stranded in their own home
It seems incredible that this can happen, but astonishingly she is not the first to have found herself stranded in her home. We reported in September on the woman in Brownhills in the West Midlands who had been trapped in her property - and her car trapped in her front garden - when the neighbours erected a 6 foot fence at the bottom of the garden. She was still able to use her back door and rear driveway, but the car is stranded.
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Other tales of being trapped at home are even more unexpected. A great grandmother in Tysley in the West Midlands was trapped in her home yesterday by wheelie bins. The council had delivered her bins directly outside her front door, and because she has mobility problems she was unable to get past them. The 77-year old was trapped in her property and shaking when she was rescued by neighbours.
But perhaps the oddest tale was of the 69-year-old woman trapped in her home in Bridlington, East Yorkshire, by seagulls. Over four days in August last year she was unable to leave the property because of the gulls which had nested in her chimney. They were protecting their nest and their offspring, and swooped and pecked her whenever she tried to go out. It was only when the fledgling flew the nest that she was able to leave home again.
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