Government planning inspectors look set to decide whether a Romany Gypsy family which created an unauthorised home in open countryside after finding living on a council-run travellers’ site “intolerable” should be allowed to remain there.
An agent for Oathie Sykes’ family told North Yorkshire Council’s Thirsk and Malton planning committee an appeal would be launched over its decision to refuse consent for a change of land use near Sheriff Hutton, north of York, to a four-pitch traveller site and to use an existing building for storage and breeding small pedigree dogs.
Ahead of the meeting the family had claimed restricting the site to their use would breach their human rights as they had spent a “vast” amount of money developing the site, having moved on to it three years ago without permission.
The decisions follow years of mounting tensions over the site, with the family accusing the authority of failing to provide a sufficient number of places where three generations could live together and local residents claiming planning officers had failed to enforce rules others must abide by.
Recommending the scheme be approved, council officers told elected members they had a duty to meet the needs of people with protected characteristics and the needs of the several children on the site had to be given great weight in planning decisions.
The meeting heard councillors had accepted the family’s need to live at the Sheriff Hutton site after claiming the authority had failed to control “fly-tipping, raves, loud music playing, rat infestation and intolerable mixed tenants with threats of violence” at the council’s Tara Park Gyspy and Traveller site in Malton.
Nevertheless, the meeting heard the Tara Park site was popular with other Gypsies and set to be fully occupied.
An agent for the family said static caravans on the Sheriff Hutton site would be well screened by vegetation and that caravans in the countryside were not “an unfamiliar feature”.
He said the family would be left homeless and needing to find a school and medical facilities if the proposal to create four 22m by 31m pitches off Cornborough Road was rejected.
However, the meeting was told the proposal had attracted scores of objections from residents, some of which could not be published “due to the nature of the material”.
Resident John Hamilton told the meeting the council had failed to use its enforcement powers over the unauthorised development and had written a “biased and discriminatory” report against those objecting to the proposal.
Penny Bean, chair of Sheriff Hutton Parish Council, expressed “utter disgust” at the way the proposal had been handled by planning officers, adding it had been littered with “blunders” and that the parish authority had “no confidence whatsoever” in North Yorkshire’s planning department.
After Councillor Sam Cross said giving consent would “legalise an illegal occupation of land”, planning officers said the Sykes’ family move was “unauthorised but not illegal” as no enforcement action had been launched.
Councillor Nigel Knapton said the applicant had been given a second chance to minimise the impact of the development on open countryside, but had not done so due to his own preference.
After councillors agreed the development would have too great an impact on the countryside, the meeting heard the family would be able to remain on the site pending the appeal, which they would have six months to lodge.
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