I’ve been doing a bit of digging since my planning appeal was refused just over a week ago. Not garden digging. But digging into the planning history of the farm track where my land is, and where all my objectors have their properties.
I always knew that the bunglow and the holiday home had gone through on planning on the four year rule, many years ago. It was a fact not lost on me when the owners started reporting me to the council repeatedly.
The woman in the bunglow applied for retrospective planning on her block of four stables while my planning app was in. Mine took 18 months. Hers took 7 weeks. There were no drawings on her plans, and the community council said that the application was “vague”, but it was passed by David Harries at PCC, nice and easy.
There was no talk of it being retrospective. And no talk of it being highly visible. The concrete floors, electricity, water, pretentious clock, were all deemed suitable to stay, even though she didn’t ask permission first. What makes an application like that go through, and an application like mine to be refused?
Another objector, a very well respected architect, who wrote a huge objection to my application, has a little cottage in his garden that he rents out. Turns out, this hasn’t got planning permission. But it’s been there long enough for the council to allow him to keep it. Funny that. He’s got to apply for a certificate of lawfulness. Isn’t that very suspicious? Someone who gets posh houses through planning as part of his job and has daily contact with the council would surely be very aware of the rules regarding planning. So it seems he was just trying to get away with it. And he has. They all have.
The holiday home at the bottom of the track was also built without planning. The owners like to tell the story of how they duped the planners by putting old soil between the stones so that when it was analysed it wasn’t shown to be the concrete pointing that had actually been used.
Last year, my water pipes were cut, by another neighbour who lives in vehicles. I was told he had planning permission for this site, but it turns out that he doesn’t. Yet no one on this track seems to mind his scrapyard, but they seem to take real umbridge to my cabbage patch.
The real point here, is the absolute two-facedness of a mafia ganging up on me when their noses are in no way clean, and they have ALL been in contravention or breach of planning. All of them. Yet the council saw fit to refuse the person who actually wants to farm this farmland, who actually asked for permission to build a house.
They have no need for the things they’re allowed to keep. The holiday home owner has two cottages side by side in a village called Wilton in Wilshire, a village where the average house price is £700k. She has two of them. And one here.
The guy in the bus has just inherited a cottage from an old lady up the road, so he has somewhere to live. Why is he still on the land, displaying a sold sign on the house, when the company whose sign he is using have never had the property on their books?
Why is the architect allowed to rent out a second home without planning? Has he declared that income? Has he paid council tax? He’s converted his sheds to a studio and a home for his flash sports car. But that’s ok. Why?
The bunglow that was built on a wing and a prayer and got planning under four year rule, but now also includes four stables outside the curtilege of the garden, is perfectly acceptable to the council. Why?
Point is, they got away with it because no one reported them. They’ve been sneaking about down this track for years. Yet as soon as someone else does something they’re straight on the complain and object train. Surely that’s the worst kind of hypocrisy? To be so blind to your own activities while judging and slandering someone else? To insist no one else has an opportunity, even though you’ve all been doing exactly whatever the hell you want? I don’t think so.
I don’t suppose they ever expected their stories to see the light of day. When they began their campaign of bullying I was in the middle of a divorce, weak, exhausted and alone. That’s not the case anymore. I’m going to fight this to the death. Mark my words. They have holiday homes, rental properties, stables, spare cottages. All I want is a home.
This hypocrisy and corruption stops now. Who’s with me?
Postcards from the Hedge 