Inspector orders builders’ yard owner to clear site near Newport
The owner of a former builders’ yard near Newport has lost her appeal against a council order which demanded that she clear the site.
Lorraine Jones has co-owned the quarter-acre plot off Barrack Lane, Lilleshall since 2018, and last year lost a legal battle for permission to use it for storage and distribution in her trailer and container export business.
In April, Telford & Wrekin Council issued an enforcement notice giving her six months to remove vehicles, storage containers and other equipment. She appealed, and the Planning Inspectorate agreed to some technical amendments – including extending the compliance period to nine months – but otherwise upheld the order.
Church Aston and Lilleshall councillor Andrew Eade, said he was relieved at the decision, and paid tribute to the more than 200 local residents for their work in the “very complicated and hard fight” to remove the business from the site.
In her appeal decision notice, government-appointed planning inspector Debbie Moore wrote that Mrs Jones “explained that they operated elements of their business from the site, including storage of containers, machines and lorry chassis”.
In 2019 Mrs Jones applied for a “lawful development certificate” to formalise this use. Her application for that cited an “established use certificate”, awarded in 1981, that confirmed the site had been used for storage for nearly 20 years before that. She also presented evidence about the site since 1981, aiming to show it continued to be used that way with tacit permission from the authorities.
Two hundred local people objected to her bid, including 14 who signed affidavits.
Overgrown
Ms Moore said these stated “there was no storage use and the land was overgrown and unkempt” before Mrs Jones’s business arrived. Some “acknowledged there was building material on the land, but this was dumped as opposed to stored”, the inspector added.
Ms Moore ruled a breach of planning control had taken place.
Councillor Eade said: “This has been a very complicated and hard fight by all concerned and has taken a long time to get to this point.
“However, both myself and residents were determined to battle this intrusion to the very end as it was clearly the wrong operation in the wrong place, having an appalling impact on the village, residents and local environment.
“It is more with relief than anything else that we have not only been successful in stopping the operation, but the inspector has also agreed with us that the site, located in the middle of Limekiln Woods, must now be returned to its previous condition.
“I pay tribute to local residents who have given so much of their time to bring about this success and also pledged to oppose any such future development in our local woodland tooth and nail.”
Despite her main ruling, Ms Moore sided with Mrs Jones’s argument that the timeframe Telford & Wrekin Council gave her to comply with the notice was too short.
“I shall, therefore, vary the compliance period to allow nine months, which I consider to be reasonable and proportionate in the circumstances,” the inspector wrote.
She also amended the order so it requires earth bunds on the site to be altered, rather than removed, as the original council notice said.
