Find, save and share Public Notices that affect you in the area.
Search the Public Notice Portal What is the Public Notice Portal?What is the Public Notice Portal?
The Public Notice Portal carries statutory public notices published in local newspapers and is the fastest and most effective way of finding out what is happening in YOUR neighbourhood.
Search the Public Notice PortalA couple are having a second go at regularising their “eco-house”, built at a historic Herefordshire farm without planning permission.
Carola Girling of Upper Poppinger, Woodend, west of Ledbury applied last April for a certificate of lawfulness confirming The Farm had been completed over four years ago and lived in continually since, and that no enforcement action could therefore be taken against it.
She and her second husband Charles, “a qualified architect with a keen interest in alternative building technologies”, planned and built the eco-house, with straw bale walls, “despite their advancing years”, her application explained.
RELATED NEWS:
- Enforcement action threat to ‘secret’ eco-house near Ledbury
- Riley Hill Farm motocross track staves off enforcement
- Enforcement threat to 'scrap' car collection at farm
But planning officer Tracey Meachen said the application failed to back up its claims with evidence, despite Mr Girling being “knowledgeable in planning matters” through his profession.
This included a lack of evidence of communication from utility companies or from the council’s building regulations, council tax or electoral role departments, while a claimed tenancy at the property was “false”, she said.
Ms Meachen concluded there had been “a deliberate decision by both parties to conceal the project… until the period for enforcement action had expired”, and the request for a certificate of lawfulness was refused.
Now in a renewed attempt, Mrs Girling confirms in a declaration that the house had been built “without the benefit of planning permission” between 2018 and 2019, “and has been continuously occupied since that time”.
She maintains The Farm also has its own water, gas and electricity supplies and drainage system, and so has “functioned as an entirely separate dwelling since I first occupied it in December 2019” – contrary to one of the reasons given for the previous refusal.
OTHER NEWS:
- Anger as 'bodged repairs' leave pothole-ridden ‘jungle tracks’
- No second chance for ‘organised crime’ off-licence
- Can you get caught by a red-light camera in Herefordshire?
Also, “The Farm was not constructed covertly and at no time had its occupation been clandestine, as evidenced by the signs we installed,” she states.
And though it had not been registered for council tax with Herefordshire Council, Mrs Girling said she has since been sent a council tax bill for the financial year 2020/21, “which indicates the authority accepts The Farm was being occupied as a dwelling at that time”.
The council is not accepting comments on the application, but aims to decide on it by March 24.
Mrs Girling declined to comment on the case.
Share