WHEN Steven Whitnall returned home to discover something amiss in his back garden, you could have knocked him down.

He was shocked to discover that council workers had partially dismantled a wall at the rear of the house without his permission and carted away all the bricks.

Earlier, he had contacted Bury Council asking only for information about a neighbour whose own section of wall he thought was dangerous.

But when Mr Whitnall and his wife were out, a council employee apparently inspected the wall at his home in Handley Street, Bury, and decided to draft in workers to make the potentially dangerous wall safe.

Since then, the householder has been hot on the trail of his missing masonry, but to no avail.

"I'd written to the council asking them for an address for the gentleman who owns an empty house next door," he explained. "Some of the bricks had fallen off his wall and I wanted to get the problem rectified."

But days later he was shocked to discover that council workmen had partly dismantled the wall at the rear of his and two neighbouring homes.

"The bricks were taken away. When my wife came home, she thought we'd been burgled because the back gate was wide open," he said.

"Then we found a recorded delivery letter from the council stuck in our letter box."

To make matters worse, he said, all the bricks were removed from the site.

Mr Whitnall added: "They've just all disappeared. The bricks cost 80p each.

"As far I'm concerned, we got the bricks when we got the mortgage, so they're mine. I was told they'd been taken to a tip at Fernhill."

Despite numerous phone calls, he has been unable to get the bricks back.

He has now written to the local authority chief executive, Mark Sanders. "I want the bricks returned so I can get someone to rebuild the wall," he says.

"Not only that, I've been told we'll be charged for the work, even though we hadn't asked the council to do it in the first place."

John Jones, Bury Council's building control manager, said the wall was reduced in height following concern expressed by a neighbour of Mr Whitnall.

"The wall was reduced to a safe height. It was too dangerous to leave.

"Under the Building Act, we have to deal with dangerous structures," he said.

He confirmed that the owners of the three homes would be charged for the work.

On the missing bricks, Mr Jones added: "We cannot leave rubble on the site or in the back street or gardens. It is generally tipped and isn't normally left on a site.

"We deal with hundreds of these jobs.

"But this is the first time anyone's come along and asked for the bricks back."