A council has threatened residents in a ritzy Sydney suburb with hefty fines if they do not remove pot plants outside their homes.
Pen pushers at Woollahra Council have cracked down on small businesses and well-heeled residents living in Underwood Street in Paddington, inner-city Sydney, after a complaint was made about plants and furniture on the upmarket street.
Nicola Harvey-Hall, who has lived in her terrace home for 15 years, was handed a $635 fine for the crime of having pot plants outside her door.
‘I really did treat it as a joke,’ Nicola Harvey-Hall told news.com.au.
‘I’ve never had a fine in my life. I don’t drive. The plants were beautiful. Everybody loved them.’
But now she is being threatened with sheriffs being sent round to seize her worldly possessions to sell or deduct the money owed from her bank account.
Meanwhile, a local cafe has been hit with two fines – amounting to around $1,500 – for placing boxes on the street for customers to sit on.
James Martin, who runs the Tuckerbox cafe, said the fines were ‘ridiculous’ and called for the council to ‘lighten up’.
‘At the end of the day all we are trying to create is a place for people to sit and enjoy a coffee,’ he said.
A spokesperson for Woollahra Council said that it was an offence to place anything on a road or footpath that will get in people’s way, punishable by a fine of $635.
They added that a complaint was made in December ‘relating to pot plants and furniture placed on footpaths’.
‘Following assessment by Council staff, a number of residents and businesses were contacted with a request to remove the items,’ a council spokesperson told the website.
‘In mid-January, written notices to remove items which remained were issued and in February, penalty notices were issued for noncompliance.
‘No further penalty notices have been issued.’
Over a dozen letters were also sent to individuals whose homes back out onto a laneway between Underwood Street and Dudley Street, ordering them to remove a community garden.
But the council is now helping the residents apply for the space to be approved as a verge garden.
Daily Mail Australia approached Woollahra Council for further comment.