Kestrel Hydro, a naturist spa within the vicinity of Heathrow Airport, challenged an enforcement notice that could force it to turn the property back into a “family dwellinghouse” at the Court of Appeal today.
The club, which has been operating in Staines-upon-Thames, Middlesex, near Heathrow’s Terminal 5, for more than a decade, lost a High Court challenge to the enforcement notice last year, which also forced them to remove a number of outbuildings.
They had argued that a decision upholding the notice should be quashed because the structures on the property were also used for residential purposes, and because there is a need for the facilities provided.
In today’s appeal hearing Kestrel’s barrister, Saira Sheikh QC, said that it was “unnecessary” to issue an enforcement order against the buildings.
She said she accepted that “there was a mixed used” of the buildings “that was unauthorised” as they were being used both as an authorised dwelling and an unauthorised spa.
“The mixed use has to cease,” she said. “But what is left when you cease the unauthorised mixed use is an authorised residential use”.
She said that the planning inspector who wrote a report on the property accepted that buildings on the complex that were being used for the spa, were also being used for residential purposes as an office, a laundry and a home cinema. There is no need, she said, to take them down.
In court papers used for an earlier hearing, Sheikh said that problems first arose in 2013 when Kestrel applied for the property to be recategorised from residential use to a mixture of both residential use and as a private members’ club.
The application was refused on the grounds that it would be “inappropriate development of the green belt,” that “results in the site having a more urban character”, she said.
She added that there have been no complaints about the business, and argued that the authorities had failed to take into account the “possibility that the buildings had been put (in part) to a lawful use, and could be so used again”.
Kestrel also asserted that the facility meets a community need and is in “an ideal location to accommodate the specialist needs of a naturist spa”.
Kestrel Hydro v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government Planning Court, 29 June 2016
