Furious neighbours told to fork out for £10,000 fence in ‘shopping bag row’

Residents living by a picturesque marina have been ordered to pay £10,000 for a new fence – to stop them helping boat users with their shopping.

People living in Albion Mill in Worcester have been banned from passing bags over the existing railings. To avoid a 20-minute walk carrying heavy bags, boat owners leave their shopping at metal railings on the opposite side of the pontoon where their boats are moored.

They then walk around the apartments to access Diglis Marina and have their bags passed over the railings by kind-hearted Albion Mill residents. Apartment managers now plan to erect a 2m (6.5ft) high 35m (114ft) long fence to block off the pontoon after two people complained about boat owners trespassing.

They say the current practice means boat owners access a private car park and say some people have been climbing over the metal railings. But furious residents claim they are being punished for helping boat owners. Jon Bodenham, 50, who lives in Albion Mill, said: “It is a significant cost, around £9,000 to £10,000, which is happening without any consultation with residents.

“I am just absolutely livid that a few complaints can actually enact something like this without consulting a wider body of residents. Why? Because once or twice a week someone helps someone else by handing a bag of shopping or two across a fence. The boat owners are our friends and neighbours, but this is not very neighbourly.”

Before Albion Mill was built, boat owners accessed the pontoon directly from the site but now have a 1km long detour to reach their vessels. Tony Wass, 67, has lived on the marina full-time with his partner Stuart since December 2022. Professional sound engineer Tony said a new fence would be dangerous in the event of an emergency.

He said: “At the moment, the fence means that if anyone on the boats had an emergency an ambulance or fire engine could get pretty close. If this fence goes up we’d be stuffed. If there was a fire here we’d be trapped here. The fire officer said to jump into the canal but I’m not going to do that at 67 and in freezing cold water in winter.

“The shopping thing is an inconvenience. If we have to bring our shopping on the 1km route, it’s ridiculous. It’s a 15 minute walk. The new route goes over very wide locks which are quite dangerous and you can fall into them in winter. To think we could be trapped here in an emergency is frightening.

“We never thought the fence was an issue. The thing about trespassing is ridiculous. This land is open to the public. We often have people walking up to the fence line to look at the boats. It’s the only way we could get deliveries to us because there’s no access.”

Fellow boater Joe Prentice, 69, has lived on his boat since 2007. He said: “It’s just one of those things that’s come to a head now. The actual development has been trying to get us off the mooring since 2007. They tried to claim the moorings as there, but they actually belong to British waterways.

“There actually used to be a gate on the moorings that the old factory manager used to let us use. It was a sort of community then as well. I do it, I hand stuff over, drop my shopping bags over and drop my stuff. If they used the car park in the marina it would take me 15 to 20 minutes to walk from the car park to the moorings.”

Boat owner Dave Price, 56, said: “It’s absolutely ridiculous. It’s all stemming from two people passing bags of shopping over twice a week. If I order some groceries or a Just Eat delivery they hand it over the fence. They’re probably two or three people who have moaned about it from 300-400 residents.

“There’s one woman who complained and she was shouting obscenities at us, she was calling us ‘water gypsies’.” First Port, the company which manages the converted apartment building, claim boaters are trespassing. A spokesperson said: “Climbing over the fence as an access point to and from the canal presents a significant safety concern and is likely to cause extensive damage.

“Previously, there has been damage around the fence which has had to be rectified at a cost to the residents of Albion Mill.”