Clitheroekid -
I'd rather not name the village on here. There is a management company but the manager fobbed me off on the phone after telling me the road was unadopted so I will go to the office next week, having now collected various documents (including a letter dated 1999 from the council saying they will be resurfacing the road), ask some pertinent questions and then contact the solicitor though I expect he will say the file no longer exists. Also waiting to hear what the councillor who has been approached has to say about it all. The Land Registry says my road is not registered. I don't know about the ownership of the roads in the village itself but they are certainly not maintained by the council. The management company does own some flats and other properties which are let out at very low rents. It would seem that the company did do some maintenance many years ago (though it is not clear whether the reference is to the road or the footpath between it and the village) but ran out of money; the same thing seems to have happened with the council. Since I have been here, they have only done the minimum when prompted. All plans given to us at the time show the lane as a bridleway but I can see nothing indicating that it is private, as has now been claimed, and there is no residents association. Today a plan was pushed through my door that says the lane is unadopted but I have no idea when this was produced. It looks rather modern and may be a recent concoction.
I am feeling more like Miss Marple every day. The only thing I am sure of is that whoever handled the sale of the leasehold houses in my lane and didn't sort out the maintenance situation has a lot to answer for. It is ludicrous that the residents of one side of this lane should be obliged to pay quite substantial and ever increasing sums to main the infrastructure inside the village which does not benefit us directly though anyone can visit the village and make use of its school, village hall, shop etc. without any payment, and yet be told we have to maintain our own road ourselves because it is not in the village and nor is it adopted.
Reading the Wikipedia definition of a bridleway, it would seem that we (and all the tradesmen, delivery vehicles etc.) are breaking the law. What a nonsense it all is. One has only to read 1.4 Highways Act 1980 (which was in the document IIRC you kindly referred me to and which I think is responsible for sparking off the lists of roads for which councils are responsible) to realise how poorly our legislation is drafted, viz:
"Under what is now the 1980 Act the ownership of highways maintainable at the public expense rests with the local highways authority (usually the county or unitary council), or, if a trunk road, with the Department for Transport (in practice Highways England).'' Translation, please!
"Most roads are thus subject to a public right of way, are publicly owned and publicly maintained. They are referred to as private or 'unadopted' roads. These can still be subject to a public right of way, but the public generally do not contribute to their upkeep."
So (pace PinkDalek) is this not an invitation to councils to opt out of maintaining roads they have hitherto maintained, albeit minimally which applies to most roads these days? Why should they have this option? We all pay our council tax. Why should the council not be responsible for maintaining all roads, apart from those enclosed by gates on private estates at their own request, especially when in reality the fact that it is a private road means sweet Fanny Adams insofar as keeping out any undesirables; just google the subject and read the police answers to questions on the subject. If this means we have to pay a bit more council tax, so be it. At least the burden would be distributed more fairly. However, if the repairs and resurfacing were done better, the cost would reduce dramatically. The potholes outside my house were repaired earlier this year but after all the rain we had subsequently are worse than ever. I reported them again and was told "not our responsibility; private road" but bizarrely (I have saved the best bit till last) today another resident told me that he had also reported all the potholes in the lane and had subsequently been advised that they had been inspected and there was no planned repair recommended at this stage "but we will continue to inspect in line with Highways Safety Inspection Policy". Now, does that mean that when they get really, really bad they will do them at public expense or they will do them and charge the frontagers for the repairs?