The council won’t let you sell your own car

Medway Council are at it again. In a week in which I thought the bullying autocrats at Sandwell Council were going to be the focus of my ire, Medway have sprung from nowhere to be Britain's most overbearing authority.

here, but the latest one probably takes the biscuit.

Medway Council's Environment Enforcement team have forbidden anyone to place a 'for sale' sign on their own car and park it outside their own house, on their street.

As the Kent Chronicle explains:

Trainee plumber Pete Dolling stuck no more than a sheet of paper inside his windscreen advertising his R-reg Ford Escort outside his mum's house in Hempstead.

Soon after, he got a notice slapped on the window from the council's Environment Enforcement Team telling him he had to get their permission to sell his car and then shift it within week four weeks, or risk having it forcibly removed.

The notice said: "The vehicle to which this notice is attached is being offered for sale without consent from Medway Council."

The notice demanded Pete, 32, wrote to the council to prove ownership of the car, that he was not a trader and that it was not causing a nuisance where it was parked, otherwise it would be removed and he would be charged for the cost.

That's right, Pete should have written to the council to ask if he could sell his car. But since when did councils have any sort of jurisdiction over the sale of private property?

If they really wanted to establish he wasn't a trader (although – as a commenter on the Kent website points out – in order to be done as a trader he would have to be advertising in "two or more motor vehicles parked within 500 metres of each other") then they could simply leave a note asking him to call and confirm.

But no, they would rather threaten, demand foreknowledge, and finally give a time limit before they send one of their jobsworths round to tow his car.

The hand-written note in the back window is officially banned.

By Dylan Sharpe