Private and public lanes in Jordanhill

During the last few years there have been several requests by individual residents for information on whether or not their lane is public or private. We have now obtained a definitive map from Land Services showing the situation clearly and this is attached for information. The lanes shown in red are maintained by the City Council (the formal term is “adopted”) wheras the lanes shown in blue are private.

A word of explanation may be required. A public lane means that the City Council maintains the surface of the lane whereas in the case of a private lane, the responsibility for maintenance falls to the adjacent houseowner. Both types of lane are “roads” under the Roads Scotland Act and the public have right of access. Owners of private lanes cannot gate them. For the sake of clarity there is a third type “road” known as a “private access road” (such as the roads within the Jordanhill Campus site) where the owner of the site has to maintain them but has the right to exclude the public from them.

It is worth noting that the random distribution of private lanes resulted from a consultation undertaken by the former Glasgow Corporation a few years before the setting up of Strathclyde Regional Council in 1975. The Corporation generously undertook to take over the maintenance of all lanes in the city unless there were objections from adjoining owners. At that time, a number of totally misguided activists demanded that their lanes remained private and that is what created the present situation. Most likely all these misguided individuals have died or moved away, but we are currently left with the unsatisfactory results of their actions.

Glasgow City Council website contains a wealth of information and we have now discovered that it is possible to obtain the attached map by following a devious trail through the site as follows: go to http://www.glasgow.gov.uk/ then on the home page click on Residents, /then Getting around, /Roads, /Statutory List of Public Roads, /Online mapping, / “access online mapping here” and finally inserting a street name in the table which appears.

We have been asked what would be involved in having the private lanes adopted by the City Council. When the matter was last raised a few years ago, we were told that adjacent houseowners would have to pay to have the lanes fully reconstructed to a high standard.