A critically ill man and his wife are pleading with the High Court to spare their home of 30 years from being demolished.
The couple claim that if a government decision backing the demolition is allowed to stand, they will be left homeless and facing “financial disaster”.
Richard and Linda Gosbee are asking Elias J to quash a planning inspector’s decision that, under a condition of a 1993 planning permission, their home, Longacre, at Teckhill Lane, Shearston, North Petherton, Bridgewater, must be demolished.
Lisa Busch, counsel for the couple, told the judge that the Gosbees will be left homeless and unable to afford new accommodation. She criticised the inspector for dismissing those personal factors with the finding that the couple were “the authors of their own misfortune”.
In 1988, the Gosbees were granted consent to convert a barn on their land into a home. Later, in 1993, they were awarded further planning consent to build a further property on adjacent land. But the consent contained a condition that, when the new property was completed, they would demolish Longacre. The threat to their home has arisen from their failure to realise the implications of that condition.
The Gosbees later sold the adjacent site, and, under the 1993 planning consent, the new owner built a house called Little Acre on that land. In the meantime, consent for the barn conversion, which could have provided a new home for the Gosbees, lapsed, without the conversion having been carried out.
Despite the fact that there are only two properties, the local council are insisting that the Gosbees’ home must be demolished in compliance with the 1993 planning condition.
Sedgemoor District Council took enforcement action in 2000, requiring the demolition of Longacre under the 1993 condition, and the Gosbees were given until 12 July 2001 to comply.
However, they made a new application for planning permission in May 2001, seeking permission to retain Longacre free from the terms of the condition.
The council refused that application in July 2001. The planning inspector rejected their appeal in August 2002, and the couple are now asking the High Court to quash that decision and to order the matter to be reconsidered by another inspector.
Ms Busch said that, although her clients had acted “incautiously and imprudently” in selling the site to the Sampsons and failing to retain the benefit of the first planning permission for the barn, this was a wholly inadequate basis for a decision that would substantially interfere with their human rights.
The hearing continues.
Gosbee and another v First Secretary of State Queen’s Bench Division: Administrative Court (Elias J) 19 March 2003.
References: PLS News 20/3/03
