🔗 Share this article

The initial indication Malcolm McKenzie had of his predicament was when a neighbor loudly knocked on his front door and informed him his cherished Mini had plunged into a hole.

"I went out anticipating a minor dip under a tire or something like that. But when I walked out to check it out, I understood, oh, that really is a proper hole," he stated.

His vehicle had dropped into a 10-foot wide opening, likely created by a mineshaft collapse, and McKenzie has endured 25 days caught in a administrative "difficult situation" trying to figure out how to retrieve his Mini.

The Main Problem: Unregistered Property

The hitch is that the land isn't registered. The authorities has said it can't remove the barriers cordoning off the hole until land ownership had been confirmed. "It's quite a difficult situation," said McKenzie, 36, a freelance designer. "There's bureaucracy at every turn."

McKenzie has lived in the neighborhood in Redruth for about a decade and in fact has a designated spot beside his house, but it is not wide enough to be useful so he started leaving his car outside a nearby bakery. He had verified with both the shop and the local authority that he would avoid receiving a parking fine.

"I'd finally felt like I was getting somewhere, I had a reliable small vehicle that was fuel-efficient and easy to keep on the road. It meant I could at last focus on trying to put money aside to take my daughter on her aspirational journey to Japan someday. She's constantly dreamed to go."

The Event and Aftermath

Then arrived that loud rapping on a Saturday in November. "My neighbour was quite panicked. The police arrived and closed the zone off. We all had to remain in the houses because we can't get out without passing by the collapse. The road crew arrived, erected the barrier up, and then they came out and put a additional barrier up surrounding it as well."

It is thought the opening may be an unlucky legacy of a historic local mine, a disused mining site.

McKenzie believed he would be without his car for a short period. But that short time have now turned into weeks.

A Possible Resolution

An end may be approaching. The council has stated it will work with McKenzie to – temporarily – lift the barriers to permit the car to be removed. He commented: "They have agreed to assist my insurer's retrieval crew and try to arrange a date and an suitable way of extracting it that ensures no anybody at risk."

The vehicle has been significantly harmed and is likely to be declared a total loss. "On the bright side I can say my Mini met its end in style – not everyone can claim their vehicle was swallowed by the Earth itself," McKenzie remarked.

Authority Response

A spokesperson from the local council said it felt sorry with McKenzie. But it said: "This collapse did not happen on council land. We have secured the location and informed the vehicle owner that we will arrange to lift the barrier to enable him to retrieve the car.

"As the land is unregistered, our barriers will stay up until property ownership has been determined, and we will persist to observe the surrounding area to guarantee everyone's security."