Park homes confirmed as lawful

A Herefordshire park homes site in use since the late 1940s has been given confirmation that this use is lawful.

John Gorman of RG Park Homes and Leisure had sought a certificate of lawfulness of existing use or development (CLEUD) for Green Crize Caravan Site at Lower Bullingham, south of Hereford.

His application to Herefordshire Council said that while permission appeared to have been granted as long ago as the late 1940s for “use of a trolley bus as living accommodation”, a 1960 permission expressly allowed stationing of 14 caravans.

But in summarising the site’s planning history, the application acknowledged that “as some of these historical application documents are incomplete,

it is not possible to establish whether the caravan site use benefits from planning permission or not”.

Therefore, “for the avoidance of any doubt”, the application sought to establish its continued use as a caravan site for at least 10 years, rendering it immune from enforcement action.

The application also maintained that the site and the structures currently on it meet the legal definitions of “caravan” and “caravan site”.

Aerial photographs of the site taken at various times over the past 20 years convinced the council’s planning officer Simon Rowles that it had indeed been in continuous use as a caravan park for considerably longer than the 10-year minimum period.

His report also acknowledged that “there is no basis in law” for the certificate to limit the number of caravans at the site – though the licence authorising its operation issued by the council in 2018 limited this to 12 caravans.