The High Court has today ordered a critically ill man and his wife to demolish the bungalow that they have shared at Bridgwater for the past 32 years.
Despite being told that Richard and Linda Gosbee would be left homeless and facing “financial disaster” if they have to demolish their home, as the local council require, Elias J has backed an inspector’s decision that the couple were the “authors of their own misfortune”.
He said: “It is unrealistic, and I would go as far as to say absurd, to treat the claimants as innocent parties. The claimants have, by their own actions, created such difficulties as have arisen.”
The judge’s decision has left the couple facing a legal costs bill estimated at around £20,000.
Rejecting the Gosbees’ claims that they thought that when they sold the site the planning policies would be satisfied if they refrained from developing the barn, the judge said: “If they did believe that, they were not entitled to do so. They must have realised that there was some risk in selling the land in that way.
“One can only have sympathy for the very real dilemma that the claimants face. The fact that it was in large part self-induced will not, I recognise, soften the blow. But in my view the decision was one which the inspector was fully entitled to reach.”
References: PLS News 21/03/03
