Traveller site close to Martin Clunes home approved by council
Councillors have backed the application for permanent planning permission
A traveller site, close to Martin Clunes home near Beaminster, has been approved by Dorset Council.
Despite the actor’s claim that Theo Langton and Ruth McGill are not travellers and their home is not a caravan, councillors backed the application for permanent planning permission.
Beaminster Town Council, the ward councillor, Dorset Council’s gypsy and traveller officers and the church all backed the application from the family for Wintergreen Barn, 300 yards from Higher Meerhay Farm near Beaminster – with 47 letters of public support.
Planning officer Bob Burden told Thursday’s Dorset Council area planning committee that much of the site was disguised by natural and planted landscape, with plans for more screening to be added.
The permission for two residential caravans and a workshop is personal to the family and if they moved on the site would have to be cleared.
Tory councillors Louie O’Leary, Weymouth, and Simon Christopher, Marshwood Vale, both argued that if the site was being used for a business there should be a specific application to do that – although the council’s planning team claimed that use, for making jewellery and other crafts, was included in the application.
Charmouth and Lyme Regis Green Party councillor Belinda Bawden told other councillors the family should be congratulated for continuing with their sustainable , off-grid lifestyle on land they had owned for more than 20 years.
The motion to approve permanent planning was passed on a 7-2 vote.
Beaminster resident James Green, a retired chartered surveyor objected to the application on behalf of a couple living close to the site. He said the buildings at Meerhay had all been erected without planning permission and he called for an end to the use of the site – with another temporary permission granted to allow the family time to find somewhere else to live.
Kathryn Haskins, who lives 50 metres from the site with her three children, said she was ‘deeply concerned’ that there had been no contact with her over the issue by Dorset Council. She claimed there were now other encampments being occupied nearby, including one to the north of her property and another near Ebeneezer Cottage.
She said that granting the permission would undermine the whole planning system and the protection of the landscape.
John Steel, Kings’ Counsel, said planning had twice been rejected for the site use in 2012 and 2015. He argued that the family did not meet the definition of travellers and had refused to take up two offers of a pitch elsewhere, meanwhile adding buildings on the site without planning consent, with the council taking no action, despite request from residents to do so.
The church chaplain to gypsies, travellers and showmen Rev Jonathan Herbert spoke of the hostility and intrusion to the couple from some elements of the national press.
He said the site is sensitively planned, off-grid, and sustainable.
“They are well known and respected among the new traveller community… without a shadow of a doubt they are travellers,” he said, adding that the council had failed to provide the 143 traveller sites needed over the coming years.
He said the use of the land was well supported locally and when not travelling, the couple had been in the area for 20-plus years and “had contributed much to local life.”
Others spoke of the art classes the couple had run in local schools and the support they had offered to community events over the years.
Their planning agent Simon Rushton, said it was not correct to say a permanent planning application had been considered by an Inspector in 2012, it was temporaryuse; nor had they formally been offered other sites.
He said it was clear that traveller and gypsy sites, both private and council-run, are needed and that since 2005 Planning Inspectors, the Church and the council’s Gypsy and Traveller officers had all accept the family as travellers.
Ward councillor for Beaminster Craig Monks said he fully support the recommendation to approve: “It’s a unique application, made more unique by the individuals involved… but at the heart of this is a family with traveller status, which I accept.
“I believe the officer’s recommendation will provide certainty that this land will be used by particular people, for a particular purpose for some time,” he said.
The site features an existing barn of natural stone and timber with a pitched slate roof which is used as a dayroom/workshop/store. On the south-east side of this is a green painted caravan used for residential purposes. An awning extends from this with open sides with a sink, cooking facilities and a fire-pit.
A mobile home-type structure is immediately north-east of these structures, measuring 14.84 x 5.1m with an internal height of 2.8m, resting on slabs/blocks, with ship-lap timber cladding sides and a corrugated dark grey coloured near-flat roof.
The officer report to the western and southern area planning committee said the touring caravan previously indicated on the plans at the western edge of the car park had now been replaced with a long wheelbase motor-van, which is used for accommodation when driven to events.