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Neighbours face prosecution over junk - PICTURES
LEGAL action has been ordered against neighbours from hell who turned their Sheffield home into a scrapyard.
Sheffield Council is to prosecute Susanne Biggs and her partner Lee Mayfield at the city's magistrates' court for ignoring a notice to seek planning permission for their unauthorised operation.
The couple are also being issued with a separate stop notice by the council, ordering them to cease their activities.
Breach could lead to a further prosecution and possible 20,000 fine - and if they still fail to comply after that the couple could be hit with a court injunction which carries the risk of jail.
For more than two years, Ms Biggs and Mr Mayfield have used the grounds of their semi-detached ex-council house in Shiregreen for dismantling vehicles and equipment and storage of scrap.
Vehicles carrying rusting metal, pallets and even old tyres are parked up at the property and regularly spill onto the street outside.
People living near the couple on Woolley Wood Road say the narrow street has been choked with up to 15 vehicles at once, which have churned the grass verges into a muddy mess.
Neighbours also claim they have been plagued by rats which live amid the junk.
One Woolley Wood Road resident said: "They've had as many as 15 vehicles outside the house, the vast majority full of scrap.
"But they've bought the house themselves so can't be evicted. We've had rats coming from."
Another neighbour added: "It's a complete nightmare which we have been forced to put up with since they came here more than two years ago."
Photographs taken by Sheffield Council show vehicles outside the house loaded with scrap vehicle parts and some vans awaiting dismantling parked on the driveway.
And, in one picture, a large flat-bed truck is parked nearby, containing a huge metal container more than half the height of a house.
When The Star called at the house there was a battered blue van and a four-wheel-drive car on the drive.
Cars struggled to negotiate the road outside, where a lorry, two vans and a trailer - all piled with metal, wood and tyres - were parked.
Nobody was available for comment.
The couple, who live with their teenage children, were not at home.
The legal action and stop notice against the couple was approved at a meeting of the council's city centre, south and east planning board.
Phil Abbott, Sheffield Council's head of planning, said their activities were "unacceptable in a residential area" and did not have planning permission.
* We have been asked to point out that one of the photographs (now removed) accompanying this story showed a vehicle which formerly belonged to Independent Recovery Services. It had been sold for scrap by the firm a year before it was photographed by us.
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Friday 10 February 2012
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