Landowner made to pay £1,897 for his latest breach of planning rules
A LANDOWNER has been ordered to pay nearly £2,000 for carrying out building work without permission.
John Roger Mac ignored warnings from Blaby District Council to remove the illegal structure at Mill Bank House, in Sapcote.
The council’s planning enforcement team said permission had been granted for a similar project on the land off Leicester Road.
However, the L-shaped building under construction was not in the agreed position and was bigger than it should be.
As Mill Bank House was not being demolished, it would result in “an undue proliferation of built form within this countryside location”.
Mac was issued with an enforcement notice by Blaby District Council
in September 2021, but appealed it.
The planning inspectorate - the government body which oversees planning disputes - ruled in agreement with the council in February last year, and Mac was given six months to clear the land and return it to grass. When he failed to do so within the six months, Blaby District
Council started legal proceedings. Leicester Magistrates’ Court found Mac, of Hinckley Road, Wolvey, just over the Warwickshire border, guilty of non-compliance of an enforcement notice.
He was ordered to pay a total of £1,897.50, which included a fine of £900, costs of £637.50 and a victim surcharge of £360.
This was not the first time Mac has been in trouble for planning breaches. In October last year, he was fined nearly £9,000 by Leicester magistrates for failing to halt illegal work at Granitethorpe Quarry, also in Sapcote, when ordered to do so.
The council’s planning enforcement team said the structure had an “unsympathetic and unduly urbanising effect on the site’s rural character and appearance”.
The former quarry, now partially filled with water, is in protected countryside. Mac was given two months to remove newly laid concrete foundations, blockwork and brickwork and return the land to its previous state, which he did not do.
Magistrates deemed on that occasion that his decision to continue the work was a “deliberate and intentional act, consistent with Mac’s general pattern of poor historical compliance with planning and environmental matters”.
Councillor Ben Taylor, Blaby’s portfolio holder for planning delivery and enforcement, said after the latest hearing: “This is another success for our planning enforcement team who work so hard to prevent unwanted and poorly designed developments in our district.
“People who flout planning rules will be brought to account.”