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The first sign Malcolm McKenzie had of his situation was when a neighbor loudly knocked on his door and informed him his beloved Mini had plunged into a opening.

"I stepped outside anticipating a minor dip under a tire or something like that. But when I went out to check it out, I realized, oh, that really is a significant cavity," he stated.

His vehicle had dropped into a 10-foot wide opening, possibly caused by a mineshaft collapse, and McKenzie has spent 25 days caught in a administrative "nightmare" trying to determine how to extricate his Mini.

The Core Problem: Unregistered Land

The hitch is that the property has no registered owner. The local council has said it can't remove the fences cordoning off the sinkhole until land ownership had been established. "It's quite a difficult situation," said McKenzie, 36, a self-employed creative. "It's red tape everywhere."

McKenzie has lived in the area in Redruth for about a decade and in fact has a parking space next to his house, but it is too narrow to be practical so he started leaving his car outside a local bakery. He had verified with both the shop and the council that he wouldn't get a ticket.

"I'd finally felt like I was getting somewhere, I had a reliable small vehicle that was fuel-efficient and simple 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 one day. She's constantly dreamed to go."

The Incident and Aftermath

Then came that loud rapping on Saturday 1 November. "The person next door was quite panicked. The police arrived and closed the area off. We all had to remain in the homes because we can't get out without passing by the hole. The highways people came out, put the fence up, and then they came out and placed a additional barrier up surrounding it as well."

It is believed the hole may be an unlucky legacy of a historic local mine, a disused copper and tin mine.

McKenzie believed he would be separated from his vehicle for a short period. But that short time have now become weeks.

A Potential Resolution

An end may be in sight. The council has said it will work with McKenzie to – briefly – remove the barriers to permit the car to be removed. He said: "They have agreed to assist my insurer's recovery team and try to arrange a day and an suitable way of getting it out that doesn't put anybody at risk."

The car has been badly damaged and is probably to be declared a total loss. "On the bright side I can say my Mini met its end in a memorable way – not everyone can say their vehicle was eaten by the Earth itself," McKenzie noted.

Authority Statement

A representative from the authorities expressed it felt sorry with McKenzie. But it said: "The ground giving way did not happen on council land. We have secured the location and informed the car owner that we will organize to temporarily remove the barrier to allow him to retrieve the vehicle.

"Since no one owns the land, our barriers will stay up until property ownership has been determined, and we will continue to observe the vicinity to ensure public safety."