A Totnes man says a dangerous bush puts the lives of his young daughter and himself at risk during their daily walk home from school.

Stewart Sivarajah and his five-year-old daughter are forced to step out on to the busy A385 Paignton Road because a section of the pavement is blocked by an overgrown hedge.

Fast cars and huge lorries whizz by them a mere foot away, some beeping their horns warning the pair of the perilous situation they are in on the edge of the road.

Each time they do it, Stewart’s daughter, who he prefers not to name, quakes in fear and tells her dad she is scared.

Their route home from Berry Pomeroy Primary takes Stewart and his daughter through a “beautiful” footpath and alongside the A385.

Near the junction with Jubilee Road a wildly overgrown hedge blocks the pavement.

Stewart said: “This overgrown hedge forces us out on to the road.

“If you are an adult you can push the branches and brambles away from your face and go through but it’s not so easy for children.

“It’s a super busy road so I carry my daughter with my back to the hedge and try and squeeze past.

“The road dips and also the hedge obscures your vision so you can’t see what’s coming, which also means they can’t see us.

“It’s a narrow part of the road and if a wide lorry passes the tyres are right up close to the edge of the pavement – it just whizzes past with less than a foot gap. If that happens I have to huddle and duck.

“Cars beep at us thinking we are doing something dangerous but the pavement there is unusable.

“There is no other route we can take to divert us away from this bit of the path.

“It’s really scary and I absolutely loathe it.”

Stewart continued: “My daughter has just started school and we want to make it a pleasant experience.

“The permissive footpath is a lovely country lane with cows and pheasants everywhere, which she absolutely loves but when it comes to the dangerous part of the road she’s petrified.

“It’s absolutely stressful for us both.”

Stay-at-home dad Stewart contacted Devon County Council about cutting the hedge back but was told it belongs to a private house.

He said: “The council has written to the property and given them 14 days to cut it back. The deadline was last Friday and it hasn’t been done.

“I asked the council what would happen now and they said their enforcement officer would check the situation and then request the council’s contractors to take a look and get back to them with a date of when they could do cut the hedge back.

“The council wasn’t able to tell me when this would be done.

“I want it done now. The council should prioritise this.

“If there was no pavement there I could understand it, we can choose to take the risk, but there is a pavement there, it’s just unusable.

“Anything could happen between now and when the council cut the hedge back and we take the risk every day until something happens.”

Stewart added: “My wife drops our daughter to school every morning on her way to work and we don’t want to have to buy another car just for a school run.

“I’m perfectly happy to walk my daughter home, we chat about the day and what we are going to have for dinner.

“It’s a lovely thing to do rather than plonk your child in a car and drive home and it’s why we live in a rural area.”

A weekend gardener, Stewart says it would take him an hour to cut the hedge back himself. “I’ve knocked on the property door three times to say if they couldn’t do it I would come and do it for them, free of charge but each time there’s been no one there.”

A Devon County Council spokesman said: “We carried out the final notice inspection and have requested that our contractors now carry out the work as a priority.

“The landowner will then be re-charged the costs.”