Only One Planning Authority - God

[Triassic]

A judge has criticised a "breathtakingly arrogant" Christian woman for her "strange interpretation of the Bible" after she and her husband broke planning rules and claimed the only authority they recognised was God's.

 

Laine Shepherd, 44, and Stephen Shepherd, 46, continued to use their farm as a campsite after being ordered to stop.

 

https://www.independent.co.uk/news/uk/home-news/christian-couple-planning-basset-farm-god-authority-devon-fine-laine-stephen-shepherd-a8559511.html

Edited September 29, 2018 by Triassic

[Bitpipe]

I worship the Flying Spaghetti Monster but even He kneels at the feet of the LA planning officer. 

[newhome]

Very odd. They are presumably living in the caravan(s)? Reminds me however of when there were caravans parked at the top of a village local to me in Kent and rather than enforcement there is now a site up there. I very much doubt anyone would have got permission to build houses on it. 

[Ferdinand]

Brilliant. The missing phrase is “God’s personal instructions are not a relevant planning matter in Torridge”.

 

It reminds me of the Fracking Protesters sent to prison last week who maintained that they had been sent down for ‘peaceful protest’ when they had actually blocked a public road for 4 days by camping on top of a convoy of lorries and been found guilty of ‘public nuisance’. And also of the Freemen of the Land who still think we are living in a Georgian emergency.

 

The irony is that they could do it for 28 days a year without worry.

 

It seems that the 3+ static caravans are still there, so there could be a bargain for a Devon based buildhubbers with suitable transport available who want to help out.

Edited September 29, 2018 by Ferdinand

[Jeremy Harris]

1 minute ago, Ferdinand said:

The irony is that they could do it for 28 days a year without worry.

 

You can be very cunning with the 28 day rule, too, as long as you have a group of at least thirteen, preferably 14, people.  A small group of flying friends have provided themselves with an airfield, without needing planning permission, by using the 28 day rule.  They clubbed together and bought a field, then divided it up into strips, and each member holds the title to one of the strips.  They erected a couple of poly tunnel hangars, that are classed as temporary agricultural buildings, to keep their aircraft in.  They keep a separate usage log book for each of their airstrips, to make sure that none of them is ever used for more than 28 days in any 12 month rolling period.  The strips are used in sequence across the field, with the unused strips being used for rented out grazing (they just move an electric fence).

 

You could, I'm sure, do the same with mobile homes, just move them from one pitch to another every 28 days.  The key is to ensure that each pitch is in separate ownership - this trick does not work if one person owns the lot.

[ToughButterCup]

Criminal: Your honour, as God is my judge, I am innocent !

Judge:  He isn't, I am, 3 years.

 

Yet again ( quick someone nudge @MikeSharp01 ) this is a question of ethical relativism, and its constellation of related issues.

Who is the ultimate legitimate authority?

 

Genuine Pastafarians  (@Bitpipe above) claim their belief is in a real deity. As do many Christians. And that the Deity has legitimate authority.

The thing the Shepherds missed was the relevance of that authority. 

 

@Nickfromwales's authority carries relevance in plumbing and Welshness; but not in brain surgery and Danish bacon. 

 

[curlewhouse]

"It reminds me of the Fracking Protesters sent to prison last week who maintained that they had been sent down for ‘peaceful protest’ when they had actually blocked a public road for 4 days by camping on top of a convoy of lorries and been found guilty of ‘public nuisance’." -  By coincidence I just listened to a report about this only this morning. The reporter made the interesting observation that when he looked into it the very same judge who jailed them, on record repeatedly gives paedophiles suspended sentences -  whatever the rights and wrongs of what they did in protesting  (apparently none had previous convictions and all 3 were employed) there seems to be a loss of proportionality. Or one could be cynical and wonder if money talks in our courts..  

Edited September 29, 2018 by curlewhouse

[Stones]

2 hours ago, JSHarris said:

 

They erected a couple of poly tunnel hangars, that are classed as temporary agricultural buildings, to keep their aircraft in.  

 

 

But it's the use of the building that's important...and aircraft wouldn't on the face of it usually be defined as agricultural machinery (accepting they could be used at certain times of the year for crop spraying etc).  Have they been challenged at all over their use ?

[Jeremy Harris]

13 minutes ago, Stones said:

 

But it's the use of the building that's important...and aircraft wouldn't on the face of it usually be defined as agricultural machinery (accepting they could be used at certain times of the year for crop spraying etc).  Have they been challenged at all over their use ?

 

No, they haven't been challenged at all, and they've been using the poly tunnel hangars for at least 15 years that I know of.  The founder of the group is the farmer that owned the land originally, and wanted his own airstrip (as a fair few farmers around here seem to have; for some reason we have seem to have a lot of "flying farmers" around here).

 

The local authority never seem too bothered by farmers having airstrips around here, for some reason, as I know of another one where the farmer has been operating his Piper Cub from the same field for around 20 years now.  He did come to the attention of the local authority a few years ago, when his airstrip ended up being marked on a  chart by the CAA, but because there's a CAA requirement to maintain a record of every aircraft movement, with dates and times, and he'd been doing that ever since he first started using the strip, he could prove that he'd been using it for well over a decade, so it qualified as a lawful development, I believe.

[ProDave]

3 hours ago, JSHarris said:

 

You can be very cunning with the 28 day rule, too, as long as you have a group of at least thirteen, preferably 14, people.  A small group of flying friends have provided themselves with an airfield, without needing planning permission, by using the 28 day rule.  They clubbed together and bought a field, then divided it up into strips, and each member holds the title to one of the strips.  They erected a couple of poly tunnel hangars, that are classed as temporary agricultural buildings, to keep their aircraft in.  They keep a separate usage log book for each of their airstrips, to make sure that none of them is ever used for more than 28 days in any 12 month rolling period.  The strips are used in sequence across the field, with the unused strips being used for rented out grazing (they just move an electric fence).

 

You could, I'm sure, do the same with mobile homes, just move them from one pitch to another every 28 days.  The key is to ensure that each pitch is in separate ownership - this trick does not work if one person owns the lot.

I don't know why the travelling folk don't do that, other than they have no respect for the law.

 

28 * 13 = 364 so they would have to go somewhere else for 1 day to make it legal.  Not an issue for the flying club as I doubt they fly every day so easy to keep within the 28 days.

 

[Ed Davies]

My understanding is that using a bit of your own ground as a private strip for your personal use isn't a planning issue at all, in the same way that parking your car on your own land doesn't require change of use to a car park. Even having friends drop by for a cup of tea in their aeroplanes is no different in principle from friends arriving by car.

 

It's only when there's some sort of arrangement with third parties that it begins to matter. Friends had a private strip that they flew their aeroplanes off with no hassle at all. He used to do a twenty minute aerobatic practice flight before starting work in the morning. Only when he started, with others, an aerobatic team and would be going off to commercial airshows and his team mates would be arriving for practice, etc, did they worry about planning permission. It was amusing that people nearby objected that having aircraft coming and going would be terrible but they hadn't even noticed that the strip had already been used for a couple of years.

[Jeremy Harris]

I'm pretty sure it comes under the change of use part of planning, in that land designated as agricultural, or associated with a dwelling, can't be used as an airstrip, other than under the 28 day rule, without needing planning consent for change of use.  I can't remember what class of use airstrips fall under, probably one of the light commercial categories, perhaps.

 

I know a few strips that only operate for 28 days in any rolling 12 month period within about 30 miles or so of here.  It sort of works, as long as you can trailer your aircraft around from strip to strip.  Mine used to live de-rigged in a covered trailer anyway, as did a few others at the strip I flew from.  Even when I moved to Old Sarum I still kept the aeroplane de-rigged in the trailer there, as it was a lot cheaper than the hangarage charges, plus the aeroplane didn't get hangar rash from being moved around by other people all the time

 

I think a lot of small rural strips just operate without any form of consent, though, certainly around here.  There are at least half a dozen farm strips that I've seen from the air that don't seem to be marked on any charts and are in places where no one would know there was a strip if they didn't spot it from the air. 

[Ed Davies]

https://www.britishhelicopterassociation.org/simple-guide-for-setting-up-an-unlicensed-helicopter-site/

 

Would presumably also apply to fixed wing:

 

Quote

Any owner of a piece of ground may use it as a helicopter landing facility without any kind of
permission, provided the following conditions are met:-

…

•   Its use is confined to the private or business use of the owner, his own employees or
anyone specifically visiting him for social or business purposes.

…

 

I think that's how farmers operate off their own strips as many days of the year as they like. Nothing metaphorically or literally under the radar. It'd be when they let anybody else use the site that the change-of-use clock would start counting up to 28 days.

[Jeremy Harris]

The difference is the class of land, I believe.  If you build a helipad in your garden, and only use it yourself, that's fine, and doesn't require change of use.  The same goes if you build an airstrip in your garden (and I know of one massive mansion of a house in Somerset that has one right in the front garden - I flew in there many years ago to see the owner, who is, rather oddly, now in prison).

 

The problem arises if you try and use an agricultural field as an airstrip for more than 28 days, as I'm pretty sure that requires planning consent, in the form of change of use.

 

I would guess that there aren't many houses with gardens large enough for even a modest airstrip (I could have got in and out of a strip around 400m long, if it was clear of obstructions at either end) but not many gardens are that big.  IIRC, there is a definition of what constitutes a garden, that has something to do with the defined curtilage of the dwelling. 

 

I know that my neighbour over the road had to apply for change of use consent to convert the former trout farm that's effectively in his back garden (although was classed as light commercial use) into a paddock (which is in one of the classes of agricultural use, I think).  The local authority wouldn't approve him including the land within the curtilage of his house when he tried.  Locally there was a fair bit of concern about it, as if the land had been designated as a part of his dwelling, then it may well have made it easier for him to then apply for planning consent to develop it for housing.  As agricultural land he has a higher set of hurdles to jump if he does try to develop it (and I'm absolutely sure that's why he bought the house and attached trout farm in the first place, as are many others!).

[jack]

What happened to "render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's"?

[MikeSharp01]

14 hours ago, jack said:

"render unto Caesar that which is Caesar's"

Or his relatives perhaps?

[joe90]

19 hours ago, JSHarris said:

IIRC, there is a definition of what constitutes a garden, that has something to do with the defined curtilage of the dwelling. 

 

That was part of my planning fiasco, the council deemed part of our garden as “agricultural “ and I asked them how they came to this decision as all maps of the area clearly defined our garden and the field next door that we also own. They tried to tell me google earth was to blame but I proved there was no hedge fence or ditch as boundary and also discovered that family members could sign a letter stating that in the last “X” years they had used that area as garden (luckily the plot has been in the same family for 50 years). The council dropped their argument!.

[Ferdinand]

On 29/09/2018 at 17:21, JSHarris said:

I would guess that there aren't many houses with gardens large enough for even a modest airstrip (I could have got in and out of a strip around 400m long, if it was clear of obstructions at either end) but not many gardens are that big.  IIRC, there is a definition of what constitutes a garden, that has something to do with the defined curtilage of the dwelling. 

 

The problem with that proposal is that your neighbour could plant a row of Lleylandii or Eucalyptus !

 

Is this one reason why Bishops (apostrophe - how many Bishops?) Avenue is loved by foreign Potentates? I always think of it as one of only a few areas close to Central London where relatively basic helicopters can get in and avoid the safety-over-urban-areas problems, plus the restricted zones around Heathrow etc.

 

Ferdinand

[Jeremy Harris]

Flying in and out of London by helicopter is OK in twin engined one, it's only the single engine helo traffic that has to go in and out along the designated routes.  I've blagged a lift into London a couple of times on a helo, but always the same one, an Agusta A109, in and out of Battersea.