Since 2017, volunteers from Hemp Garden Community Association have worked to transform a neglected green space into a thriving community park. Elvet Green in Durham has been transformed from a rubbish-strewn area, to a community park with flowers and trees – all free of charge for the council. The association says that they have cleared rubbish and hazardous waste, repaired grassed areas, planted flowers, shrubs and trees, improved pathways and organised regular community work days.

Now Durham County Council has sent them a letter ordering them to cease their activities and remove their equipment from the site. The council threatens legal action and an injunction, including an application for the payment of council legal costs. The council complains that the group hasn’t sought permission to work on the land, and has also been holding unauthorised public events and other activities in the park.

Of course, the council may have plans for the park – in terms of regeneration and the further development of the area – but it can’t just ride roughshod over the group that has been restoring and maintaining the park for 9 years. The group has spent thousands of pounds caring for an area that the council neglected; now it is treating them as a menace to be swept aside.

It is also telling that the council is objecting to ‘unauthorised events’ in an area in which it has shown little interest. It is claiming its right to control activities in a park it had largely abandoned.

This shows how councils have a habit of obstructing people trying to do the right thing or to do good. Often it is the volunteers who are improving an area who are blocked by red tape and told that they have no right to do it, or that their work is a safety risk.

In another case, a 25-year old man who restored graves at his local cemetery – which he did to help his mental health after he lost his dad and best friend to suicide – was threatened with a legal order banning him from the site unless he stopped. The young man, who was praised by families for his work cleaning the graves, was told by the council that he needed risk assessments and health and safety certificates.

I’ve asked how I can get the certificates because I would do anything to continue but it feels like I’m being blocked at every opportunity.

He says that while families were grateful for his work, the council said that it wanted to ensure that ‘work in our cemeteries’ was carried out ‘safely’ and ‘with the appropriate permissions in place’.

The one that stands out to me is a woman who was suffering from cancer. She was crying on the phone, saying that’s the nicest thing anyone has ever done for me. The council’s response has blown my mind. It’s doing my head in.

This contrast between public gratitude and official disapproval is very telling. Here, the public authority is not playing the role of improving a public space or maintaining it; instead, it is the issuer of permission slips, blocking people’s voluntary contributions as ‘unauthorised’ and a health and safety risk. In these cases, the state is not improving areas itself but stopping members of the public from improving them, blocking initiative and good will.

This has to stop. People improving their areas shouldn’t be threatened with legal action and court orders. They shouldn’t be punished for doing the right thing.