“It’s not us, it’s the county”: the two-tier deflection, and how to get past it

Ask a simple question about abandoned vehicles in the wrong part of England and you can watch it bounce between two councils indefinitely, each politely insisting the other holds the answer. It isn’t always obstruction, but it stops the moment someone knows how the responsibilities are actually split.

Here is a request that sounds trivial: how many abandoned vehicles were reported in your area last year, how many were removed, and what did it cost? In a single-tier authority (a unitary or metropolitan council), one body holds the whole answer and you get it.

In a two-tier area, the same question can vanish into a gap between two organisations.

The ping-pong

You send the request to the district or borough council. Back comes a version of: “We don’t hold this, you’ll need the county council.” So you ask the county. And back comes: “That’s a district responsibility, we don’t hold it.”

Now you’re stuck. Both replies are worded reasonably, and neither is obviously wrong. A requester who doesn’t know the structure has nowhere to go: the twenty working days run out, and the request stalls for good.

Why it happens

Some of it is genuine. In two-tier England, responsibilities really are divided, and abandoned vehicles sit awkwardly across that line. Removing an abandoned vehicle is generally a district or borough function (it falls under the Refuse Disposal (Amenity) Act 1978), while wider waste-disposal duties sit with the county as the waste disposal authority. So there is a real seam: the tier that removes the vehicle and the tier that ultimately disposes of it may not be the same, and each can truthfully say “that part isn’t ours.”

But a real seam is also a convenient place to deflect. “Not held, try the other authority” is quick to send, hard to challenge without inside knowledge, and it moves the burden back onto the requester. Whether it’s honest or handy, the effect on someone who doesn’t know the system is identical: no answer.

How you actually get the answer

The deflection only works on a requester who can be bounced. When you know the split, it collapses:

• Name the duty, not just the topic. Ask the district specifically about its abandoned-vehicle removal function, and the county specifically about the disposal and waste-authority side, so neither can wave the whole thing away.
• Refuse the bounce in writing. If a district says “ask the county,” put back precisely which part of the duty sits with them and ask them to answer that part or confirm, formally, that they hold nothing.
• Use the duty to advise and assist. An authority is obliged to help you reach the right body. A vague redirection isn’t the same as meeting that duty, and saying so tends to unstick things.
• Escalate on the clock, not after it. Track the statutory deadline from day one, so a stall becomes evidence for an internal review or the Information Commissioner rather than a dead end.

None of that requires being combative. It requires knowing, before you write a word, which tier holds which part of the job, and asking each one only for the part it actually holds.