Trump case drives win in battle for bungalow
DONALD Trump’s legal battle over his Scottish golf course has helped a woman in Wales win the right to move into her bungalow.
Angela Corner cited the former US president’s court case in her fight with Monmouthshire County Council.
Ms Corner had previously been told by the local authority that she could not move into the unusual property, called Grove View, in Bully Hole Road, Shirenewton, near Chepstow, because of a 61-year-old planning condition.
The condition meant that the bungalow could only be a home to a local agricultural or forestry worker.
But Ms Corner used the case of Mr Trump’s golf course in Aberdeen, Scotland, to overturn the decision.
Independent planning inspector Anthony Thickett agreed the 2015 case law involving the former president superceded the legal arguments that Monmouthshire council had tried to use to defend its decision.
Mr Thickett said the Scottish decision had emphasised importance of what a “reasonable reader” would understand words in a public document to mean.
The permission for a “Woolaway type bungalow on existing smallholding to be occupied by full-time agricultural worker” was granted in the year the nearby Severn Bridge opened and when England won the football World Cup.
Condition one of the permission stated: “The proposal is permitted on the understanding that the bungalow will be occupied by a person employed or last employed locally in agriculture as defined under Section 221 of the 1962 Act or in forestry, and the dependents of such persons and is to be permanently attached to the existing smallholding.” The reason for the condition was “to ensure the occupant of the bungalow is a ‘bona fide’ farmworker”.
But Mr Thickett said the condition only refers to what is allowed and doesn’t set out what isn’t permitted, and that the phrase “permanently attached” applied to the building. He also said the condition allowed people other than “agricultural workers” to occupy the bungalow.
He said the word “understanding” in the condition doesn’t amount to a restriction on future occupants and said: “I consider a reasonable, informed reader would take the view the bungalow intended to house an agricultural worker. But I do not consider that same reader would take the view that first or subsequent occupation was limited to an agricultural worker.”