Battle over high rising home
Couple take on businessman neighbour over regulations
NEIGHBOURS in the exclusive Nahoon River Estate in Beacon Bay are in a legal war over a massive R4-million home being built, which they say contravenes numerous municipal zoning and other regulations.
Vanessa and Brian Burrows, who own two houses in Pearl Road alongside the massive, unfinished structure belonging to East London businessman Mcebisi Ntlikithi, have resorted to the Grahamstown High Court over the mansion being built next to them.
They are asking the court to declare unlawful those parts of the house not constructed in terms of approved building plans.
The Burrowses want the court to interdict Ntlikithi from continuing with the seven-year long building project pending a demolition application by the Buffalo City Metro.
The couple also want the court to give BCM just 20 days to apply to court for permission to compel Ntlikithi to demolish his home – or at least those parts of it that do not comply with approved building plans.
Ntlikithi got permission from BCM in 2009 to build his luxury home but then deviated from the approved plans.
According to court papers, even the approved plans contravened zoning scheme regulations and should never have been approved.
As the structure grew, the Burrows couple first complained to the municipality in April last year.
The municipality took a year to inspect and then issued a compliance notice to Ntlikithi.
But the only concern the compliance notice stressed was the addition of a single room not shown on the building plans.
But in reality, say the Burrows couple, there were several deviations, including the addition of another ground floor lounge and a further second-storey lounge and bedroom, both of which pushed the second storey height to 7.3m. In terms of the law, the height of a flat-roofed structure should not exceed 6m.
The final straw for the couple was the addition of a third storey.
Court papers suggest Ntlikithi added a roof and enclosing walls to an area meant to be an open roof garden on a two-storey building – effectively turning it into a three-storey structure.
An outside stairway was also added that, they say, was not on the original plans.
The total height of the building, say court papers, stands at a whopping 10.2m, some 4m over the permitted height.
In total, the building increased from 686m² to 750m² which meant the house covered a total of 71.83% of the erf.
In terms of zoning regulations, the structure should not cover more than 50% of an erf.
After being issued with the compliance notice, Ntlikithi’s architect immediately submitted a request for an approval for the “as-built” plans from BCM.
The Burrowses had made repeated requests to the municipality for the approved plans.
Vanessa Burrows said in an affidavit that after learning that further “as-built” building plans had been submitted for approval she had followed matters up.
She said BCM had indicated to her it had declined to approve the new plans and that the matter was being handed over to their legal department. Ntlikithi is fighting the application. He says the couple should have sought to review and set aside existing approved plans before seeking to interdict his ongoing building or compel BCM to get a demolition order.
The matter was to be argued in the Grahamstown High Court today. But the Burrows’ Grahamstown-based attorney Mark Nettelton said BCM had sought to intervene and it would be postponed for argument to a later date.