UK NEWS

PAIR HELD FOR ENDING VILLAGE’S ALARM HELL

DESPAIR: The pair face a possible prison sentence or fine for their action / posed by model

Saturday October 10,2009

By Martin Stote

RESIDENTS of a sleepy village whose tranquil beauty was celebrated by the poet Tennyson were driven to despair by the incessant ringing of a faulty burglar alarm which shattered their rural calm for two months.

So they celebrated when their 67-year-old parish council chairman and his 72-year-old deputy took action to silence the noise by cutting the alarm’s wires.

But now Edmund Done and his deputy Michael Curtis are to appear in court accused of criminal damage.

They were taken in for questioning following a complaint to police more than eight months after silencing the noise at Foxglove Cottage.

They face a possible prison sentence of up to three months or a fine if found guilty. The councillors stepped in after all efforts to find the owners of the unoccupied cottage in picturesque Hagworthingham in the Lincolnshire Wolds were unsuccessful.

Appeals to police and the district council also failed to put a stop to the 290 villagers’ misery and broken sleep caused by the cottage’s alarm.

The decision to take the pair to court has enraged residents in the village, which was the setting for Tennyson’s poem The Brook.

One said: “Everyone thinks it’s totally over the top to take two respectable elderly councillors to court.”

Parish council chairman Mr Done said: “We did everything we could to get the noise stopped but no one wanted to know.

“We appealed for help from the police and to the district council but nothing happened.

“It was ringing until the early hours of the morning and people couldn’t sleep. People were really annoyed and demanded that we do something about it.

“I admit I went round to the cottage and cut the wires but what else could we do?”

A police spokesman confirmed: “A parish council chairman and vice-chairman are due before Skegness magistrates on Monday charged with causing criminal damage.”

The incident happened in September 2008 but was not reported to police until May 2009.

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