A MAN claims his home is being ruined by an abandoned allotment – as he’s forced to spend hours chopping back weeds.
Geoffrey Johnson lives in fear that the overgrown plot, which has bushes as tall as him, could be fatal if there was a fire and he needed to escape.
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The pensioner is forced to face the jungle next door to his property in Cleethorpes, Lincolnshire, every day.
Known as “the land that time forgot”, unused doors and old windows have also been dumped among the shrubbery.
Geoffrey has now taken matters into his owns hands – taking a pair of shears to the mess every day.
He claims the local council aren’t doing anything to help as important drains start to become blocked and will soon be unrecoverable.
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He told the BBC: “It literally is like trying to fight your way out of the Amazon jungle with a pen knife.
“If this stuff catches fire it gives off dioxin which is one of the most dangerous substances there is.
“There will be so much damage, possibly even house fires. It’s a danger to life.”
But even he can’t save the land, adding: “The roots are growing under the stone work and pushing it up, it’s a ticking time bomb, it really is.”
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After contacting the council multiple times to try and salvage what is left of the allotment, he was left with nowhere to turn.
But North East Lincolnshire Council (NELC) said the land cannot be traced because it isn’t registered – meaning it doesn’t belong to anyone and is no one’s responsibility.
Geoffrey however said locals could club together to help with the ordeal.
It comes after another pensioner told how his local council let his grass become so overgrown that he couldn’t visit his wife’s memorial.
Bert Clements, 81, from Brotton near Middlesbrough, pays £162 for professionals to tend his his council house garden – but they stopped showing up in March.
NELC was contacted for comment.
