Good news: The council have replaced the rotten pallisade posts at one of our entrances, and tarmacced over the cobbles. I hate the cobbles, they are spaced just right to trap a narrow road tyre, and set in a square pattern so that this crevice continues for several yards.
Bad news: in the course of this, they've mangled a lot of the guerilla veg we'd planted there, by dumping the new posts on top of them, and somehow spraying them with tar. How they managed the latter I don't know, as the beds are raised at about 3' high.