Too-large house couple lose Royal Court appeal
Thursday 14th January 2010, 2:29PM GMT.
The court examining Andy and Hege Bougourd’s St Andrew’s home yesterday. (Picture by Steve Sarre, 0901127)
Andrew and Hege Bougourd had contested the Environment Department’s refusal to grant them retrospective planning for unauthorised work carried out on their home, Le Haut, Les Niaux, St Andrew’s.
But after the court visited the property yesterday morning for a vue de justice and further submissions from counsel later, the department’s decision was upheld by a 5-3 majority.
For the department, Advocate Philip Nicol-Gent said the court could uphold or dismiss the appeal. It was not for the court to decide whether or not retrospective planning permission would have been granted, but to decide if the department’s decision to reject the appeal had been within the bands of reasonableness.
For the Bougourds, Advocate Peter Ferbrache said the fact that Mr Bougourd might have transgressed did not affect planning matters and was no reason to dismiss the appeal.
Recoverable costs were awarded to the department.
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That looks awful with the different colour roofs
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Anyone any idea what the consequences of this ruling will be??
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Corker – probably a slap on the wrist and an note home to Mummy.
People accidentalyl forgetting to apply for permission and jsut going ahead has been going on for ages.
Until the states stand up and make people pull down the changes its going to carry on happening.
if i remember correctly, most of the Grand mare golf course was applied for retrospectively.
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We did build our house too big, all we gained was a kitchen work top. We asked the IDC if we could put the wall back the 600mm it was too big but we had an order from them to demolish our home. If we did demolish the house, we would never get permission again as it becomes a new build under the rural area law. The only reason we took it to court was that we had to fight to save our home. Call that justice? More to follow
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Where was Building Control in all this ?
Isn’t it their job to visit sites at various stages and pass the work done so far ?
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Everything was passed and did get checked. When we first put in our application we asked for two dormer windows. Planning refused it but said we could have a glass gable due to the surrounding area. It was not until the glass gable went up that our “neighbours” who live 800 yards away, started complaining. Nobody ever objected to our applications in the gsy press two years previously. We never asked for the glass gable and now we are being punished for it. The roof you see in the paper is not the roof that is too high, it is at the back. It is slightly higher because of the engineer report for steels which was also submitted to the IDC.
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