The Daily Telegraph - Saturday
Planning trolls turned my beach hut dream into a nightmare
By Isabel Oakeshott
I HAD a dream, and it seemed a modest one. On an island where the beaches are the colour of buttermilk and the water shimmers emerald green, I would build a beach hut on my own small piece of land and take in the view.
Just along from the place where I planned to make the magic happen is a bay that looks so exotic in summer that locals call it “Caribbean Corner”. However, this lovely spot is right here in the UK – where nothing that needs planning permission is ever straightforward.
What started as a simple project to replace a rotten B&Q shed turned into an extraordinary and very British drama, with much wider implications for our planning system.
I was about to receive a brutal lesson in the challenges associated with building anything in this country – and an insight into why successive governments never hit their housing targets.
Bat and bird surveys, pointless paperwork, and tricky local politics were all hurdles I expected. The shock was the lengths to which eco zealots, reactionaries and those with nothing better to do will go to block proposals.
Worse was the discovery that law firms have found a way to make money from Nimbyism at public expense.
It involves using a process usually employed for major public projects such as HS2 and nuclear power stations to mount judicial reviews against trivial residential planning consents.
The gamble? That local authorities won’t have the resources to put up a fight. If the council folds, the “no win, no fee” solicitors sit back and collect their hefty costs.
When I bought a small top-floor apartment in one of the most sought after villages on the Isle of Wight, its seafront terrace had been a key selling point. Adjacent to a public slipway, the triangular shaped patch of land was a couple of metres above sea level, right on the beach. At about 25 sqm, the barren patch of concrete would never do for a house, but what it lacked in size, it more than made up for in location. Overlooking the Solent to Portsmouth, it was right by the action, yet private.
Perched on rotting stilts that became more perilous with every winter, the existing structure was quite literally on its last legs. It was crying out to be replaced with something better.
And so it was that I hired a local architect, making crystal clear that whatever we designed should not adversely affect anyone. Made of wood, steel and glass, the bigger beach hut would be a nautical version of a fancy garden office. No higher than the existing shed, it would not obstruct anyone’s view. What could possibly go wrong?
Quite a lot, as it turned out. Up went the obligatory public notice advertising my application, and in poured the letters – more than 50 in all, from addresses as far afield as Oxfordshire, Lincolnshire and West Sussex. Indeed, the majority appeared to be from fellow second home owners, who only grace the island once or twice a year.
Impressive in their imagination, submissions to the Isle of Wight council explored every possible angle, from climate change to “culture and heritage”
As for the purported risk to flora and fauna, no seagulls or squirrels or indeed any other wildlife frequent the terrace. That didn’t stop a Mexican wave of hand-wringing about the potential impact on “bats, reptiles and birds”. One particularly creative objection fretted that yachties pulling boats up the slipway might be temporarily blinded by rays of sunlight bouncing off the glass.
Town halls are wearily used to this spirit-sapping stuff and see it for what it is. The depressingly predictable blizzard of objections that accompany every minor attempt by homeowners to expand windows; extend kitchens or stick in skylights is as frustrating for them as it is for applicants, clogging up a system that should be focused on delivering new housing and other vital public projects. After some further to-do, the Isle of Wight council accepted that the objections were spurious and rubber-stamped the consent.
I was so pleased that I shrugged off a requirement to carry out yet more costly environmental surveys and a bonkers ban on construction work from September to March. Designed to protect “overwintering seabirds”, the effect of this well-meaning but hopelessly misguided condition would be that all building work is done during the holiday season – just when it would be most annoying for neighbours and tourists.
Unfortunately, local objectors had one ace left to play. Without warning, a few months later, I was served notice that the consent was being subjected to judicial review. Using a notoriously expensive process more commonly used by environmental campaigners to challenge Secretaries of State over major infrastructure projects, someone
Claimants fretted over rising sea levels – I would have had more luck trying to build Noah’s Ark
had drafted in Leigh Day, the “no win, no fee” lawyers, to attempt to overturn my consent. The company focuses on personal injury claims; clinical negligence; employment cases and human rights, but has a sideline challenging planning applications.
After poring over every line of the documentation associated with my application, they had produced a 175page dossier setting out a claim on a single technicality. It alleged that planning officers had “misunderstood” or “misinterpreted” flood protection regulations. Citing climate change, the claimants fretted that rising sea levels “over the next 100 years” would create devastating floods and “flying debris.” Evidently I would have had more luck with an application to build Noah’s Ark.
If the name Leigh Day sounds familiar, it might be because the firm played a central role in a notorious investigation into allegations of mistreatment of Iraqi prisoners by the British Army following the Battle of Danny Boy in May 2004. The company represented claimants whose allegations were later found to have been baseless.
The saga created misery for veterans and tied the Ministry of Defence in knots for years, leading to a public inquiry that cost taxpayers £25 million. It ruled that the allegations were “wholly without foundation and entirely the product of deliberate lies, reckless speculation and ingrained hostility” on the part of some of the Iraqi claimants. In the wake of the scandal,
Application to redevelop a rotten shed caused a tidal wave of objections and the threat of judicial review
Leigh Day solicitors faced disciplinary tribunals but were cleared.
Judging from my case, the business model for attempting to mount judicial reviews of trivial planning consents appears to be based on identifying some procedural error by planning officers; presenting council bosses with an enormous dossier highlighting the mistake; and praying that they do not have the stomach or resources for a fight. In such situations, cash-strapped councils must either defend their original decision – with an uncertain outcome and considerable cost – or fold, at which point, they automatically become responsible for the other side’s costs – mostly from the public purse.
In my own case, the applicant told the court that, inclusive of VAT, legal fees were likely to run to £60,000.
As I impressed upon the Isle of Wight council when I urged them to fight, there is a real point of principle here: who makes planning decisions? Is it local authorities, who truly understand the area and its politics; or “no win, no fee” lawyers sitting in cosy London offices, constructing cases that may have little to no merit? If councils simply fold when they are hit with these cases, they can expect many more.
Thankfully, the big bet failed. With the support of Bob Seely, the Isle of Wight MP, who recognised the case’s wider implications, the council decided to defend its decision. A barrister was instructed, and a few weeks later, the case was thrown out without ever getting to a judicial review.
The withering judgment was delivered in just three pages – making a nonsense of the 175-page dossier.
Though I’m pleased I won, I regret that my little project caused so much angst. No development of this kind is worth falling out with neighbours. Those who still feel sore about losing may take some comfort from the fact that building costs have almost doubled in the time it has taken me to jump through their hoops. Last summer we used the space for a pop up café instead. It seemed to make a lot of people very happy. Maybe that’s the way ahead.
In the end though, this is not about me and my beach hut; nor about those who went to the ends of the earth to block it. It is about the integrity of the planning process, and everything that militates against progress in this country. If building a beach hut is this hard, what hope is there of solving the housing crisis?