Kentish Express Ashford & District
Inquiry to decide gypsy family’s fate
The battle to permit a gypsy family to stay on a site in Ruckinge will be subject to a public inquiry next month.
Cherry Tree Paddock has been home to one family for a number of years, despite the lack of official permission for them to stay.
The area, in Bromley Green Road, is in ancient woodland covered by a Tree Preservation Order and is a designated wildlife site.
It has been subject to two failed planning applications made to Ashford Borough Council (ABC).
But now, applicant Richard Wood has lodged another appeal against an enforcement notice served by the council. The notice states that, without planning permission, the site has been used for the residential stationing of a caravan, a portable cabin, a septic tank and hard standing.
ABC intends to evict the family and bulldoze their facilities.
In August 2015, ABC threw out the first application – part retro- spective – to develop the site’s ‘dilapidated’ barns. Mr Wood’s application said it would bring the “untidy, unused land back into productive use”.
However, ABC said it would be detrimental to the countryside.
A second application for the site was submitted a month later, suggesting the site should become home to one gypsy family with two caravans and one utility building.
On behalf of Mr Wood, Phillip Brown, of planning consultants Phillip Brown Associates, wrote: “It has to be accepted that the majority of traveller sites will be in the countryside.”
Neither of the applications attracted any public objection from residents.
But just two months later, the second application was refused.
The council said it would “result in an isolated, sporadic and visually incongruous and intrusive development adversely affecting the character and appearance of the area”.
It said there was no justification for the application and added: “No evidence has been submitted of how the applicant falls within the definition of a gypsy and traveller.”
ABC’s Gypsy and Traveller Accommodation Assessment in 2013 said there was a need to provide 24 extra pitches between 2012 and 2019. Mr Brown alleges that the council has not allocated a single pitch.
The inquiry is at the Civic Centre, in Tannery Lane, on Wednesday, November 16, at 10am.