Travellers must leave - Wiltshire

From the Salisbury Journal

A TRAVELLER family have a year to move their mobile homes off a greenfield site near Alderbury after a planning inspector dismissed their appeal.

David Cooper and his family had a planning application to turn land at Hillbilly Acre on Southampton Road into a four-pitch Gypsy site refused by Wiltshire Council and a planning inspector backed the council’s ruling in July 2012.

The council then issued the family with an enforcement notice to vacate the land but the Cooper family appealed the enforcement notice and another inquiry was held.

Now another planning inspector has upheld the council’s enforcement notices about the unauthorised residential occupation of two plots on the site.

Douglas Morden said the harm to the setting of the adjacent listed building, as well as the adverse impact on the character and appearance of the area and highway safety issues outweighed the need for Gypsy and Traveller sites and the family’s personal circumstances.

Residents in Alderbury and Clarendon have been fighting the plans since April 2011 and will be hoping this will finally put an end to the issue.

They were concerned about the harm the site, which was agricultural land, would cause to the setting of St Marie's Grange, a Grade I listed building which was the first house to be built by Victorian architect AWN Pugin, and Grade II listed Belmont House. Residents also raised concerns about the safety of vehicles moving into and off the site onto the busy Southampton Road as visibility was seriously restricted.

The Cooper family now has up to a year to find alternative accommodation, remove the mobile homes and restore the site to its former condition.

Buildings erected on one of the plots without planning permission had to be removed within three months.