Back to drawing board for ‘Shedley Manor’
PLANS to replace a house hidden in a shed by a convicted fraudster have been sent “back to the drawing board” by planners, who convinced members of Derbyshire Dales District Council’s planning committee the new dwelling looked “incongruous” and out of scale.
Shedley Manor, in Rodsley, was concealed in an agricultural building by Alan Yeomans, who was jailed in 2016 for money laundering and drug offences after failing to declare a lavish lifestyle at a bankruptcy hearing.
The new owners of the property, which is now called Carr Hall Farm, Mr and Mrs Higgins, put in detailed plans to demolish the building and replace it with a new fivebedroomed property with a two-storey garage with room for 10 cars.
But planning officer Chris Whitmore recommended committee members refuse the plan, which he said was too large for its surroundings and featured a number of architectural details that would be out of keeping with the traditional buildings in the area.
Ahead of last Tuesday’s meeting, which was conducted over the Zoom video conferencing platform and broadcast live on Youtube, the applicants offered to work with planning officers to reduce the scale of the building and adjust some details.
Calling for a deferral on the decision, they appealed through their agent for time to negotiate a more agreeable design - but Mr Whitmore urged councillors to ignore this plea and to make a decision on the day.
The applicants, he said, should have taken up an offer of pre-planning advice before submitting their application, at which point concerns could have been addressed.
By deferring the decision to allow time for what could be a fruitless negotiation process, it would undermine the preplanning advice process, he added.
Members voted unanimously to agree with Mr Whitmore and followed his recommendation to refuse the application.
The applicants can now choose to either appeal the decision, or to resubmit a fresh application, with the avenue of pre-planning advice still open to them.