

British Farmer Ordered To Tear Down Home He Built - mhb
http://www.npr.org/templates/story/story.php?storyId=123333892

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transmit101
Ok. I've lived in England all my life. Let's highlight a few facts:

* Planning laws in the UK exist largely to protect the countryside from being over-developed by often powerful building firms.

* Surrey (the county where this man built is castle), being directly south of London, is one of the most difficult and expensive areas to buy (or build) property.

* The English countryside is under threat, especially in the south-east of the country where urban growth is a constant threat to communities.

* Planning laws are well known and understood here. This man tried to circumvent them at every opportunity, for his own benefit, and got caught out. Big time.

You can argue that this is only one little castle, or that it shouldn't apply
to individuals, or whatever, but the fact is that the laws exist and
(generally) do a good job at making sure that the beautiful countryside
doesn't turn into an over-developed shit-hole.

I understand the reasons these laws exist. There's no reason at all to call
them out for being either over-bureaucratic, or an example of the over-arching
state. They exist for a reason, basically the good of the wider community, and
this guy tried to circumvent them for his own selfish (presumably financial)
benefit.

I've absolutely no sympathy for him at all.

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petewarden
I grew up in a quaint British farming village, and I'm pretty conflicted about
this story.

\- My family are all nurses, and my brother and sister can't dream of buying a
house in our home-town, it's too expensive.

\- The planning restrictions are pretty draconian. This keeps the supply of
housing very limited, but also prevents the fields between us and the next
village from being covered in houses and turning us into a suburb of
Cambridge.

\- The local farmers own land that's benefited from the rise in prices, and so
tend to be pretty rich, hence the castle-building.

So I do end up admiring this guy's chutzpah, but I can't summon up too much
sympathy when everyone else is stuck following the rules. I'd be much more
interested in a campaign to change the planning regulations and skip the
current uber-NIMBYism.

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mattwdelong
That's a shame. It's a beautiful house.

Another instance of beaurocracy failing the common man. I highly doubt he is
hurting anyone or anything. Especially considering it's placed in the middle
of a field and no one noticed for two years.

~~~
ubernostrum
Flip this around: if nobody knew it was there, then nobody checked that it was
built to code. And, well, building codes are generally held to be as useful
today as they were back when Hammurabi wrote down the first one (of course, in
his day enforcement was a bit more strict...).

~~~
holygoat
Codes exist to benefit _the homeowner_. Nobody should have the right to force
you to tear down your newly built home because they think it's not up to an
arbitrary standard.

There's also nothing in the article to suggest that it's not up to code. I'm
sure the electricians did their usual standard of work...

~~~
ubernostrum
_Nobody should have the right to force you to tear down your newly built home
because they think it's not up to an arbitrary standard._

If you built that home illegally, then someone most certainly _should_ have
the right to take action. Also, building codes aren't exactly "arbitrary", ya
know?

 _I'm sure the electricians did their usual standard of work_

But you don't know. You can't know. Nobody knows and nobody can know, because
-- by hiding the construction -- this guy almost certainly also hid it from
the routine checks which would have provided that sort of information. Most
work done by most contractors most of the time is probably fine, but
inspections and other checks are there for the cases where the work _isn't_
fine, because we've decided, as a society, that it's worth that overhead to
avoid the nasty consequences.

~~~
scotty79
I wonder to what building codes are shanty towns built or trailer parks. I
wonder why government won't go bother them.

~~~
ubernostrum
There's a tent city/shantytown here in my home town which is in a perpetual
cycle of being torn down and rebuilt. Every so often someone dies or is
seriously injured, and the police clear everybody out and tear it down. Then
people come back and start rebuilding it for a while. Then someone dies or is
seriously injured, the police clear everybody out...

~~~
scotty79
That kinda illustrates what I mean.

You can effectively perform legal action against single guy who was smart and
rich enough built huge castle for his family (and probably did it smart way),
but you can't do anything effective to protect people inhabiting most
dangerous buildings because you don't have tools to enforce building code on
them. Periodical tearing it down doesn't do anything good.

------
jrockway
If I were him, I would pull an Arthur Dent and lock myself to the house on
demolition day.

(The hyperspace bypass is another issue altogether, however.)

------
dzlobin
Heard this on NPR today while driving, they seemed to focus more on the fact
that it was a castle and he hid it for four years by building a giant haystack
wall around it, and not so much on the fact that the gov't is ordering him to
tear it down.

~~~
ghjkmjnb
That because that's the legal point. He was denied planning permission, but
built it anyway - relying on a rule that says if nobody reports it for 4years
it's grandfathered in.

But the court ruled that the four years only started from when he removed the
concealing straw bales and people could see it.

Otherwise I could bury some foundations, wait four years and claiming that
nobody had complained I could 'complete' my 40 story apartment complex.

~~~
blahedo
Not quite---the rule says (according to the BBC article on this) that the four
years starts from _completion_ of the building, which would prevent your
scenario. The current judge appears to be arguing that the bales of hay, which
were not structural and to my understanding didn't even touch the house, were
integral and that the house was not 'complete' until they were removed. It's a
bit of a stretch, and it sure sounds like the judge is just annoyed that this
guy found a loophole.

~~~
pmjoyce
My understanding was that the point being argued was over whether the removal
of the hay bales constituted continuation of the building project - which
resets the 4 year time window - or if it was unrelated.

Given that the only reason the hay bales were there was to conceal the
construction of the property, I don't think it's unreasonable to argue that
removing them constitutes part of the project.

------
patrickgzill
The court's standard of what "deception" is seems a very slippery slope
indeed. What next - mis-spell a word on a form, and have the entire
application voided years later and a permit revoked?

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mos1
I remember this story from a couple years ago.

Sad that the courts appear to not be going his way. That said, I'd love to see
what the planning commissions specific complaints are, to see if we're dealing
with some sort of legitimate concern, or if it's just general abuse of power.

