A BITTER BETRAYAL ‘People in rural areas do expect to be protected’
It was Kath and Garry Smith’s dream home in a rural idyll until an illegal travellers’ camp was built next door. Still, it looked as if they had officials on their side. Then came jaw-dropping treachery...
THE view from the old stone viaduct sweeps down over the ancient flood plains to the sun-dappled dunes of the famous St Cyrus nature reserve. Birdsong fills the air warmed by the unseasonable early May weather – a scene of unspoilt natural beauty.
Certainly Kath and Garry Smith thought so when they happened upon this rural Kincardineshire idyll 15 years ago and first caught sight of the low white-washed building they hoped would be their forever home.
‘When we drove down the narrow road and saw the farmhouse for the first time, we knew we had to have it,’ Mrs Smith would later recall. ‘The location was perfect. The house overlooked a lovely field with horses down to the river. It was an ideal setting.’
Over the following decade or so, they worked hard to build up Eskview Farm into an award-winning B&B business while their seven acres of gardens and fields offered a haven for their own horses and dogs.
Then, one morning in September 2013, they were woken by the deafening sound of industrial earthmoving equipment. Bulldozers and tractors had moved in under cover of darkness and were now busily transforming the field next door into a building site.
It was only later that they discovered the full extent of the unfolding horror as the identity of their uninvited neighbours became clear – gipsies acting without planning consent were intent on turning a strip of newly acquired land into a permanent halting site for up to 60 travelling families.
What was a farmer’s field backing on to a fragile Site of Special Scientific Interest now resembles a town with tarred roads, street lighting and neat brick walls marking off the plots for rows of caravans, while electronic gates control who comes in and out.
Since then, the travellers have been engaged in a protracted wrangle with the local authority to remain at the grandly titled North Esk Park, despite expert fears the site is at risk of flooding from the River North Esk. Worse, they argue, the camp’s very existence has increased the chances of the Smiths’ B&B flooding.
When construction work was at its peak, Mr Smith said: ‘This has been a living nightmare. We have watched helpless as the field has turned into a small village.
‘I can’t believe they can just arrive and start all this work without permission.
‘We have had to put up with months of hell since they arrived. Anyone can see it shouldn’t be there. It’s just not suitable and no one seems willing or able to do anything about it.
‘Having that site next door has spoiled our lives. It’s put us under a lot of strain. It’s not the just the noise and dirt and everything caused by the building works. When I come home from work, the place is lit up like a Christmas tree. We are frightened that we wake up in the morning to find our home and business flooded. You just can’t get away from it.’
Last month, more than 40 local objectors were left stunned when a full meeting of Aberdeenshire Council voted heavily in favour of granting retrospective planning permission to the gipsies.
The extraordinary decision by a council, which for years has failed to meet a pledge to provide sufficient travellers’ sites, flew in the face of its own officials’ advice to refuse planning permission and an objection by the Scottish Environmental Protection Agency (Sepa).
Even more surprisingly, it comes only 12 months after the same councillors threw out an almost identical application for the site by a hefty majority.
Sepa warned that the site’s location on a functional flood plain left it vulnerable to flooding, while the council’s own flooding and coast protection team stated that the plans ‘will result in significant risk to lives and property’.
The council’s unexpected volte-face has left an uneasy tension hanging in the clear blue skies above St Cyrus with angry locals struggling to comprehend what could possibly have changed in the space of a year to make the disputed site a more attractive proposition.
After the vote, Mrs Smith said she felt ‘let down’ by the system, adding: ‘I can’t understand how they’ve come to that decision. Basically, the council has chosen to ignore the whole infrastructure of the planning system. Nothing has changed since it was last refused a year ago. They are going against more than 40 objections, Sepa, environmental health, the flooding and coast protection team just to fulfil their own failure to provide travellers sites.’
This messy saga is still far from over – thanks to Sepa’s intervention it has been referred to Scottish ministers for further consideration – but it should serve as a warning to anyone who imagines this could never happen in their own back yard.
The Smiths’ lives have undoubtedly been turned upside down by events beyond their garden gate.
They are, understandably, anxious not to inflame matters with their new neighbours, some of whom live just the other side of a wooden barricade erected around the camp.
In fact, the family are sympathetic to the travellers’ need to find suitable halting sites in the area and, in any case, their real beef is with the council and a vote they regard as perverse.
The gipsies have artfully outflanked officials by ignoring their efforts to halt the village’s construction and then appealing to councillors for retrospective permission to keep the unauthorised development.
If they succeed, it would be a textbook example of how to build an unlawful travellers’ site and get away with it.
A residential site with planning permission in an area of such outstanding natural beauty would normally be worth hundreds of thousands of pounds to a developer.
Alex Johnstone, Conservative MSP for North East Scotland, said: ‘This drives a coach and horses through the current regulations and creates a dangerous precedent I’m sure others are looking at right now to see if they can exploit.
‘Nobody anywhere can feel safe when this is allowed to happen.
‘We are always reminded in planning that we do not own our view but those living in a rural area would expect to be protected by planning regulation. We do have to treat
‘No one seems willing or able to do anything’
everybody equally but I don’t feel this has happened in this case.’
When the diggers arrived in the field, neighbours were led to believe it was being turned into stables. There are now around 30 caravans parked in these ‘stables’, along with motor homes, two large residential homes and commercial vehicles, but not a single horse in sight. A borehole was sunk to provide a private water supply and a smart shower block erected.
Once their attention was drawn to it, Aberdeenshire Council did serve stop notices on the travellers in October 2013, ordering them to cease any further development.
In truth, the notices and a subsequent court action have had little material effect on the day-to-day activities of the gipsy village.
For their part, the gipsies – who own the land – lodged the first of three applications for retrospective planning permission. After withdrawing their first attempt at the eleventh hour, they returned in spring last year with a second application. That was heavily defeated by 42 votes to 20 with many councillors persuaded by Sepa’s arguments that the site simply was not safe for human habitation.
Sepa included in its report photographic evidence of extensive flooding in the field during a bad storm in 2012 before the gipsies arrived.
For its third attempt, the gipsies were far better prepared, with both a planning expert, Alan Seath, and a consultant hydrologist on board to prepare a report which contended that Sepa had overstated the flood risk.
Bill Howatson, a councillor for the Mearns ward which encompasses North Esk Park, lives nearby and has voted against the development at every turn.
He was not persuaded by the gipsies’ flood risk assessment, saying: ‘My argument has long been that the site is on a functional flood plain therefore, to my mind, it would be bizarre to have a settlement there.
‘We had on December 30 last year very dramatic flooding in the River North Esk [caused by Storm Frank] and the travelling people were evacuated by the rescue services and it took some time. What more graphic illustration can you get of the risk than something like that?’
Although the camp did not flood and the evacuation was voluntary, Mr Howatson added: ‘Nevertheless the risk is there and the first aspect of a positive flood framework is prevention and reduction of risk.’
Mr Seath, who also acts as a spokesman for the gipsies, said his clients built the camp after becoming fed up with the council’s longrunning failure to provide them with suitable sites, choosing the land at Nether Warburton because the field ‘became available to them’.
Plots on the site have been sold off to at least ten of the residents, although two belong to North Esk Investments Ltd, whose sole director is William MacDonald, a businessman with strong connections to the travelling community who runs other nearby caravan parks.
Mr Seath said his clients had taken a financial risk: ‘If planning permission is ultimately refused and the site is lost then that asset is lost.’
When asked whether he thought travellers had acted fairly towards the Smiths, he said: ‘My job is as a planning professional and to act for my clients in making a robust case. My job is not to judge anybody.
‘The full council have considered all the material aspects and have come to a decision.’
When the gipsies’ third application came before the full council on April 28, Mr Howatson moved the motion to reject it, saying the effects on neighbouring residents and their businesses were made ‘crystal plain’ to him.
He said the fact that Aberdeenshire currently has only one official travellers’ halting site – in Banff – had clearly weighed heavily on the debate: ‘I think colleagues would be mindful that if this was allowed to go ahead it would tick a box in terms of providing another site.’
Councillor Jean Dick, who represents the Mearns ward and voted against the application last year, admitted she changed her mind based on the flood risk assessment report prepared by the travellers.
She said: ‘It was to do with the flood risk. We felt the case that the applicants presented this time was robust. I do empathise with [the Smiths], but we need a travellers’ site in Aberdeenshire and the council had not provided one and the travellers have.’
Fellow councillor Martin Ford, who led the bid to approve planning permission, said that the ‘overriding need’ to find suitable sites for gipsies had provided the justification to go against planning policy and approve the application.
He conceded that the application departed from the council’s planning policy in coastal areas, but added: ‘We do have discretion for granting applications that go against policy but we have to give a reason for doing that.
‘On this occasion, we have a site that was not perfect in all sorts of ways, but nevertheless the issues with it were sortable. The issues people were highlighting as problems, such as flooding and screening to improve the amenity of neighbours, could be sorted out.
‘And breaching our planning policy was justified by the overriding need for travellers’ sites in Aberdeenshire. In failing to provide proper authorised travellers sites, we have not just let down the travelling community, we have let down the whole community because the inevitable consequence is travellers’ sites in other locations which are often not suitable.’
He readily conceded that the decision was a contentious one, not least for the Smiths, saying: ‘I have no doubt they would prefer an empty field next to them, but most planning applications we get other people would rather the applicant did not get permission.’
Ultimately, Scottish ministers may decide this, although over a threeyear period to September 2014 only 14 of around 120,000 applications dealt with by local authorities were called in. If they do intervene, a final decision could be months or even years away.
In the meantime, that view from the North Esk viaduct could scarcely offer a more glaring contrast to that which first seduced Kath and Garry Smith. ‘It used to be tranquil here with people walking their dogs and visiting the nature reserve,’ said Mr Smith once. ‘Nobody wants to walk around here any more.’
‘Nobody wants to walk around here any more’