Council to seek court order to demolish Navan house
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From today’s Irish Times:
Council to seek court order to demolish house
Paul CullenMeath County Council is expected to seek a court order shortly for the demolition of a large two-storey house near Navan which was built without planning permission.
The council is expected to reactivate earlier legal proceedings for the demolition of the house near Bohermeen. This follows the refusal of An Bord Pleanála to grant retention permission for the unauthorised development.
The house was built by the owner, Michael Murray, a local plumber who owns a plant hire business. At 588sq metres in size, it was about twice as large as the house proposed in the original planning application. Mr Murray declined to comment on the case.
Last November, An Bord Pleanála refused retention permission for the house, which is in a cul-de-sac at Faughanhill. It ruled that the house was out of character for the area and represented an “unduly prominent and incongruous” feature on the landscape. It would also give rise to excessive development in a rural area lacking services and would set an undesirable precedent for further development, the board found.
The board rejected arguments made on behalf of Mr Murray by planning consultant Seán Lucy, who said his client was born and reared in the family home less than half a mile from the house under dispute. He said Mr Murray had applied for planning permission for a house for himself and his family on three occasions on three different sites, but was refused.
Mr Lucy said Mr Murray had built the house “in desperation” because he needed a home for his wife and three children. His client recognised that he was “remiss”, but pleaded that this should not prejudice his case.
The An Bord Pleanála inspector found that Mr Murray met the criteria for local needs under the guidelines for sustainable rural housing and ruled there were no traffic issues. However, he claimed permission would place excessive pressure on waste water treatment in an unserviced rural area and so would be prejudicial to public health.
An Taisce (Meath branch) had appealed the application for retention permission, saying it could set a dangerous precedent. Not only had the original planning refusal been ignored, but the house built was considerably larger than the original application, it said. The area has seen a number of planning applications, most of which have been refused.
A council spokesman declined to comment on the case as it was the subject of legal proceedings which were started after the council refused Mr Murray’s initial planning application on the site in May 2006.
© 2008 The Irish Times
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What a chancer. He built a 6,330 square foot house in desperation?! Desperation would have been renting in Navan!
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and I hope he has to pay for the demolition.
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Incredible this wasn’t in Cavan or Kerry.
Hay presto! Farmer unveils the ‘illegal’ mock-Tudor castle he tried to hide behind 40ft hay bales
By Daniel Bates27th January 2008
Hiding a needle in a haystack is easy enough.
But Robert Fidler kept something much bigger concealed among the piles of straw down on his farm… a castle.
Over the course of two years, he managed to secretly – and unlawfully – build the imposing mock Tudor structure in one of his fields, shielded behind a 40ft stack of hay bales covered by a huge tarpaulins.
The family hid the house behind hay bales 40ft high for four years while it was being built – in a failed bid to avoid having to apply for planning permission
An Englishman’s home is his castle: The Fidlers’ dream home complete with ramparts and cannons.
Once it was finished, he and his family moved in and lived there for four years before finally revealing the development – complete with battlements and cannons – in August 2006.
Mr Fidler claims that because the building has been there for four years with no objections, it is no longer illegal.
But he is under siege from council planners, who say the castle at Honeycrock Farm, Salfords, Redhill, Surrey, will have to be knocked down.
“I can’t believe they want to demolish this beautiful house,” said 59-year-old Mr Fidler. “To me they are no different than vandals who just want to smash it down.”
Mr Fidler, a farmer, erected the disguise in 2000 out of hundreds of 8ftx4ft bales of straw and covered the top with blue tarpaulin.
The Fidler’s country kitchen is located in the turret of their ‘castle’.
After building the castle on the site of two grain silos at a cost of £50,000, he and his wife Linda went to extraordinary lengths to keep it secret. That included keeping their son Harry, now seven, away from playschool the day he was supposed to do a painting of his home in class.
“We couldn’t have him drawing a big blue haystack – people might asked questions,” said 39-year-old Mrs Fidler.
Mr Fidler, who has five children from a previous marriage, said: “We moved into the house on Harry’s first birthday, so he grew up looking at straw out of the windows.
“We thought it would be a boring view but birds nested there and feasted on the worms. We had several families of robins and even a duck made a nest and hatched 13 ducklings on top of the bales.”
But neighbours were unimpressed.
One said: “Nobody thought anything of it when the hay went up. It was presumed he was building a barn or something similar.
“It was a complete shock when the hay came down and this castle was in its place. Everyone else has to abide by planning laws, so why shouldn’t they?”
Problems began last April when Mr Fidler, thinking he had beaten the planning system, applied for a certificate of lawfulness which is given if a property is erected but nobody objects to it after four years.
But Reigate and Banstead Council says the four-year period after which the building would be allowed to stay is void – because nobody had been given a chance to see it.
The matter will now be decided in February by the council’s planning inspector, who could give the Fidlers as little as six months to tear the castle down.
The family are not alone in falling foul of planning laws.
Last November pensioners Eileen and Eamonn Kelly were told they would face prison unless they demolished the one-bedroom extension on their semi-detached home in Swanley, Kent after planners said it was “out of keeping” with the area.
More recently around a dozen Britons living in Spain have had their homes torn down after a clampdown on illegally built properties built on the coastline.
A spokeswoman for the Reigate council said: “Mr Fidler has built the house without planning permission, not sought retrospective planning permission and now claims it is legal because it has been up for four years.
“We don’t think the four-year rule applies because it had been hidden behind bales of hay.”
© Daily Mail 2008
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Interesting price – £50k to build that pile. Bet Mr. Fidler did not request H.M. for a license to crenellate!
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typo i reckon .. more like £500k ( waste of money either way YUK ! )
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@sinnerboy wrote:
typo i reckon .. more like £500k ( waste of money either way YUK ! )
It’s better than the near identical 3500sq ft McMansions you see all over Cavan.
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Here is the picture of that house. Roll on the end of oil when everything will change.
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The one built behind the hay bales is much nicer than that squinting windowed eyesore in Navan.
I know Meath and ABP are telling this chancer to tear it down but so many authorities would allow our beautiful countryside to be given over to such monstrosities. Irish people need to get used to living in closer proximity to each other.
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It’s all about the private motor car. The 20 or 30,000 1-offs built each year are all centered around the motor car. You wouldn’t build a house like that if you had to get a train or cycle to a workplace. When driving becomes too wasteful in a few years time all these houses are fucked.
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@Devin wrote:
It’s all about the private motor car. The 20 or 30,000 1-offs built each year are all centered around the motor car. You wouldn’t build a house like that if you had to get a train or cycle to a workplace. When driving becomes too wasteful in a few years time all these houses are fucked.
this is ireland remember, there will never be a solution to our urban sprawl and urban generated rural housing problems.
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@Devin wrote:
Mr Lucy said Mr Murray had built the house “in desperation” because he needed a home for his wife and three children.
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Fcuking class. Lol.
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Another bungalow built without PP, from 2002. And of course there’s no need to point out that this unauthorised building has long since been cleared and the landscape returned to its pristine form, ahem.
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The “castle behind the bales” story continues
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/surrey/8495412.stm -
That solicitor’s house in Kildare whose retention Charlie McCreevy lobbied for is actually not that bad. Is it really gone now?
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Another one of these. He already had a house somewhere else:
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@Devin wrote:
Another one of these. He already had a house somewhere else:
Who is Gary Chambers?
http://www.herald.ie/national-news/illegal-hillside-chalet–must-be-demolished-2076982.html
Car repairing business?
In a new build in the Dublin mountains?
I suppose stranger things have happened.
Interesting result if you enter “Chambers” here:
http://www.cro.ie/search/DisqualifiedSearch.aspx
Wonder if this is the same Gary Chambers of the same address who was running a car repairing business.
Wonder was he acting as a Sole Trader or Shadow Director on his “car repairing” business if he is the same person.
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I love these Dublin 16 “Rathfarnham” addresses – AFAIK Mount Venus Road is out in the sticks – a nice area with clena air, to be sure, but a heck of a long way from what I understand to be Rathfarnham.
As extensively advised on this thread: http://www.boards.ie/vbulletin/showthread.php?p=50710479
Okay, I’m obviously in a rut posting this stuff on a Sunday – time to clear out the cobwebs.
🙂
ONQ.
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@Paul Clerkin wrote:
The “castle behind the bales” story continues
http://news.bbc.co.uk/2/hi/uk_news/england/surrey/8495412.stmLet’s see now:
“The inspector ruled that the removal of the straw bales constituted part of the building works and the four-year immunity rule would not apply”.
And:
Deputy High Court judge Sir Thayne Forbes said: “In my view, the inspector’s findings of fact make it abundantly clear that the erection/removal of the straw bales was an integral – indeed an essential – fundamentally related part of the building operations that were intended to deceive the local planning authority and to achieve by deception lawful status for a dwelling built in breach of planning control.”
(shakes head)
I can see the High Court’s decisison being overturned.
Development is defined as “the carrying out of works on, under or over the land” in Irish law and its a pretty general principle.
Removing hay bales is not classed as development.
Storing them and placing them might be in some eyes.
Both might be thought of as being part of an Agricultural Use.
And the hay bales were without doubt integral to the strategy of deception.
But removing non-structural items like bales of hay is not part of what is commonly termed “building works” so the Judges sentiment seems strained.ONQ.
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@onq wrote:
I can see the High Court’s decisison being overturned.
Development is defined as “the carrying out of works on, under or over the land” in Irish law and its a pretty general principle.
Removing hay bales is not classed as development.
Storing them and placing them might be in some eyes.
Both might be thought of as being part of an Agricultural Use.
And the hay bales were without doubt integral to the strategy of deception.
But removing non-structural items like bales of hay is not part of what is commonly termed “building works” so the Judges sentiment seems strained.ONQ.
I disagree.
I also disagree with the consistent use by the media of “loophole”. There is no loop hole here. It’s not an unknown concept, and its there for a reason.
However, he intended to break the law. He set out to break the law, and he erected this bales specifically in order to break the law.In my opinion, in a basic sense, the bales are on par with site hoarding, and while I agree that these don’t constitute development alone. When they are used in order to conceal a structure from public domain, they form part of the process. The structure should be available to the public domain before 4 (or 7) years begins. This case can’t be allow to pass as it set a terrible precedent, and above all, he set out to break the law, intentionally.
The problem here is that everyone involved wants to get this demolished, most invlve know it was wrong. However, doing so in a manner that allows it to be tied up in legal parlance is proving difficult
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The period in the UK for planning by default is 4 years. His family was living in the house during that time so it was in a habitable state. Perhaps he could replace the straw bales and continue living there and then apply for permission to remove them. He still has a supreme court appeal to be heard.
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@Bren88 wrote:
(snip)
In my opinion, in a basic sense, the bales are on par with site hoarding, and while I agree that these don’t constitute development alone. When they are used in order to conceal a structure from public domain, they form part of the process.(snip)
They may have been used as a screen to hide unauthorised development, but that didn’t requrie a hoarding licence as it was to the rear of the house.
The fact that he concealed it with straw bales shows that straw bales to that height were permitted on his land, otherwise people could have asked to have them removed.
Storage of straw bales two storeys high not raising an eyebrow suggests there is a related use such as agricultural or equestrian that needs straw bales.
Personally I view it an another fine example of lunacy in the building game – it’ll probably be listed.
ONQ.
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@Frank Taylor wrote:
The period in the UK for planning by default is 4 years. His family was living in the house during that time so it was in a habitable state. Perhaps he could replace the straw bales and continue living there and then apply for permission to remove them. He still has a supreme court appeal to be heard.
*bweheheheheheheheh*
Are you a Planning Consultant by any chance, Frank?
We may yet be talking in RL with a mind like that.
🙂
ONQ.
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@onq wrote:
*Are you a Planning Consultant by any chance, Frank?
No, I just think there is a wide gap in the prosecution’s logic.
We may yet be talking in RL with a mind like that.
What is RL?
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Well, there is a high court decision on this matter now.
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The sad fact is that IF mr Murray is not solvent that the taxpayer or banks will carry the can IF. the project originator gets to walk away under court protection from creditors. If he his not solvent then it should simply be repossessed and sold with any equity after court and council costs handed back; returning the land to agricultural use would be wanton in this climate. Whatever happens continued residence under these circumstances is a total non-runner.
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588 square metres with no planning? This structure is a symptom of the ills that begot this country as a whole over the last decade – a big greedy unsustainable unnecessary material aspiration that celebrated giving two fingers to the rest of civic society, and as with the climate from which it emerged, it too now comes crashing down…
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