Golf course carnage

http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2024200/Defiant-golfers-play-council-diggers-demolish-course-planning-row.html&n
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PLease read this article and join on Face book Back Reddacleave farm golf course  ...    ...      

Should have got some travellers to set up camp round the perimeter. The authorities wouldn't have dared touch it then.

I certainly wouldn't sign up to that Facebook page.  Despite the usual Daily Heil screaming headlines let's just look at the facts as presented.  The landowner built the course without permission and charges people to play there.  Despite numerous appeals and enforcement orders he refused to change anything significant to comply with the planning orders, and yet still takes money off the locals.  So the council enforce their right to revert.  So what's the problem here?

Imagine another scenario.  You have a new neighbour.  Without planning permission he starts using his house as a business, with vans and lorries turning up at all hours, and then builds a massive extension to expand.  Despite several enforcement notices he refuses to do anything about it and the council finally says 'OK, carry on as you were'.  How would you feel about that?

Just because it's a golf course it should not be above the law, and actually getting planning permission now is not, frankly, that difficult.

PS - funny how the DM article didn't mention the landowners attempt to use the hated EU Protocol 1, Article 1 of the Human Rights Act to try and stop the enforcemnt notice (available here http://www.dartmoor-npa.gov.uk/__data/assets/pdf_file/0004/49018/au-dm_agenda_061109.pdf 

The fact still remains Keith that there are ways and means to do things.  It is irrelevant whether Mr Dance made money from it, he was in direct contravention of the rules of the National Parks purpose and the Sustainability policy as it was being used ofr more than 28 days a year.  If, as you say that lots of the locals and Parish Councils are for it he should have petitioned through them before, or very soon after, the land was converted.

I'm no great fan of bureaucracy, but getting hysterical after the fact and after so many warnings does not stink, it's just that none of you played the game.

Irrespective of how we feel about what might be right and what might be wrong a law(s) has been broken. We can't choose the laws we abide by and those we ignore...

Wohooo lets have a riot...

He might not be profiting from what he's done but does that make it legal?

Sorry but no I won't sign up. He no doubt knew the law before he built the course, and in my book that makes it even worse... Hope they throw the book at him, and charge him with returning the land to what it was.

Colin, I think you're right.  I just thought it was amusing that the claim under the human rights act, according to the planning commitee meeting minutes, was against the enforcement order not the refusal of retrospective planning permission.