Farm cabin must go says council

A Herefordshire farm has been told it needs to get rid of a new mobile home that was never permitted.

An enforcement notice has been served on Lodge Farm, Garway near Herefordshire’s border with Wales, saying the two-bedroom mobile home must be vacated within six months of February 5.

Within seven months the mobile home, along with “decking, dog pens, oil tank and other domestic paraphernalia” must be removed, while any remaining building materials and rubble must go within eight months, the enforcement notice says.

The case appears to have come to council officials’ notice following a retrospective bid for planning permission made by Richard Sparey of the farm last July, who had replaced an old holiday caravan with the mobile home to house “a general farm worker”.

But planning officer Laura Smith said Mr Sparey had confirmed there were no livestock at the farm, and so the council “has difficulty in accepting that these farming uses require a full-time worker to live on site”.

Refusing the application, she said that without such justification, his proposal was “discordant” with county planning policy, nor was there any planning history supporting residential use of the previous caravan.