AN EAST Lancashire home care provider has got into hot water with the Canal and River Trust after installing a garden in front of its new home.

Earlier this year Ribble Homecare moved from Darwen to Bank Cottage on Eanam Wharf in Blackburn.

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The three-year-old business, which employs 18 people providing care at home for older residents, decided to tidy up the front of its new headquarters on the bank of the Leeds and Liverpool canal.

They made a garden, benches and a picket fence along the lines of existing holes for fence posts used for a previous boundary.

Despite a warm reception from boat users, the change did not go down well with the Canal and River Trust, which owns the towpath.

Earlier this month it wrote to Ribble Homecare saying: “It has recently come to our attention that a fence has been installed enclosing the land immediately in front of your property.

“This is land that belongs to the Canal and River Trust and we find it completely unacceptable.

“You have no rights to access or use our land in this way and we therefore require the immediate removal of the fence.”

A post on Facebook asked for social media support to keep the garden to show the trust that “the general public think that it is nice to look at and should not be destroyed”, receiving more than 200 ‘likes’.

Ribble Homecare proprietor Mohammed Rafique said: “We are mystified by the trust’s reaction and would like it to send someone to look at the garden.

“The previous frontage was a mess and we think we have improved it and the look of the towpath.”

A Canal and River Trust spokesman said: “Although this may have been done with the best intentions, this has been put up on land which belongs to the trust without our consent.