Court win for Picklescott caravan pair

A Shropshire couple today won a court victory in their battle to stay in their own home.

Janta and Merav Wheelhouse have lived with their two sons in a caravan at Karuna, their 18-acre site at Picklescott, near Shrewsbury, since moving out of their Bayston Hill home in 2005. But for the last few years they've been em-broiled in a battle with authorities.

The battle is over planning permission for them to stay at the site.

Today magistrates dismissed charges against the couple for failing to comply with or contravening an enforcement notice or prohibition order to remove a steel tool shed at the site between September 26 last year and March 1, this year.

It came after Shropshire Council withdrew the prosecution at Shrewsbury Magistrates Court. The charges were today dismissed as a formality. The couple had denied the charges.

Speaking outside the court Mr James Felton, prosecuting on behalf of the council, said they'd decided to withdraw the case after receiving signed undertakings from the couple.

He said: "We have received undertakings from them that pending the outcome of other litigation the breach of the enforcement notice will be remedied within a given timescale."

Mr Felton said a separate appeal by the Wheelhouses to the Planning Inspectorate against a decision by the council to refuse planning permission for a new barn at the site was due to be heard next month.

Meanwhile, a judicial review is due to take place at the High Court in London in October after the couple won the right to challenge a decision forcing them to stop living at their farm.

The family was told it had to remove a metal storage container, a polytunnel, and the caravans they have been living in, by an independent planning inspector in January last year.

Mr Wheelhouse, 46, claims inspectors failed to take into account the therapeutic benefits his wife Merav, 43, who suffers from a rare disease of the central nervous system, gets from living at the site.

He also claims it will have a devastating impact on his two sons if they are are forced to leave.

Mr and Mrs Wheelhouse, who were not at today's hearing, were unavailable for comment.