WRONG STUFF!
Founder of White Stuff is told to raze ‘eyesore’ tennis court and garage
a FaSHiOn tycoon who built a garage, tennis court and skate ramp without planning permission faces being ordered to demolish the lot.
Sean Thomas, founder of high street chain White Stuff, incurred the wrath of council officials after expanding on to former farmland behind his home in Salcombe, devon.
The additions to Mr Thomas’s home, in a protected area of outstanding natural beauty and alongside a designated site of special scientific interest, were branded an ‘ eyesore’ in a ‘unique and iconic landscape’ by the local authority.
Mr Thomas now faces legal action to flatten the two-storey double garage, tennis court and skate ramp, which he built in 2016 on a strip of farmland his family had bought, and ‘return the land to its former condition’. West alvington Parish Council officials said Mr Thomas had ‘no respect for either the landscape in which they are privileged to live or the law’.
The White Stuff fashion chain was founded by Mr Thomas in 1985, selling T-shirts to skiers in the French alps. it now has more than 115 stores as well as concessions in John Lewis and House of Fraser.
Following complaints from neighbours after finishing the additions to his home three years ago, Mr Thomas put in a retrospective planning application to South Hams district Council, but that was turned down last month. its planning decision says the expansion ‘represents an unwelcome and incongruous intrusion into an undeveloped countryside location that is within the South devon area of outstanding natural beauty’.
it added that it results in ‘significant adverse impacts to the natural beauty, special qualities, distinctive character, landscape and scenic beauty of South devon’.
Mr Thomas said he hoped that landscaping the area would make the development acceptable to the council. He is working on another planning application ‘to reflect the additional substantive measures’.
He said he and his family shared ‘local opinion that this is a beautiful and highly valued landscape’, adding: ‘We remain hopeful of a satisfactory outcome for all concerned.’
However, South Hams district Council said its ‘ position remains the same’.
didi alayli, chairman of the South Hams Society, a local environmental protection group, said she was ‘fairly sceptical’ about Mr Thomas’s attempt to stave off enforcement action, adding: ‘The refusal of this retrospective application was rightly firm and unequivocal.
‘The South Hams Society would expect to see enforcement action against the whole scheme.’
Mr Thomas’s house was itself built following a controversial planning application in 2011. it was approved only after the original plans were scaled back.
‘Significant impacts to scenic beauty’