Four mega mansions with a market value of £1m each, have been torn down after a council discovered massive breaches in planning regulations. The six-bedroom properties built in the serene West Pennine Moors were flattened by Bolton Council.
Work is continuing apace on the final house after it was discovered that the properties had been built in the wrong size and wrong location. The properties were nearly ready to move into, when building inspectors made the shock discovery of multiple building regulation breaches.
It was found that the properties were not only built in the wrong location, they were also nearly a third bigger than what had been authorised. It has been a lengthy, years' long argument between Bolton Council and homeowners, which first started in 2018 when Bolton Council initially ordered the demolition.
As reported in The Mirror legal wrangling and pleas from homeowners meant the bulldozers didn’t move in until May last year. New photos show that the site, once a collection of dream homes, has become little more than rubble - with just one lone luxury mansion left standing.
Cllr Andy Morgan said: “Four of the five houses have now come down. It's the right thing to do.
"There are two applications for individual plots to be built with slight alterations. The intent is to rebuild them and save so much materials, brick by brick.”
Building work began on the homes in 2014, when planning permission was granted for the conversion of a former farmhouse and four new homes around a central courtyard. The stone-built exclusive homes were erected on a sprawling plot near Bolton, Greater Manchester.
But finishing works were put on hold after a complaint was filed in October 2016, and Bolton Council found the houses were not being built in accordance with the planning permission. An inquiry heard how plot one on the site had a 31 per cent bigger footprint than allowed, plot two was 19 percent bigger, plot three 32 percent bigger and plot four 33 percent bigger.
The local authority first issued an enforcement notice to flatten the entire development in 2018, following an impasse with the developers, Sparkle Developments. But an appeal claimed the enforcement notice issued by the council to demolish the homes was excessive and too harsh to remedy any breach in planning regulations.
One of the previous homeowners, Elan Raja told an earlier hearing that he had paid £1,057,000 for the plot in 2016. He also claimed he had since spent more than £215,000 on the rental of an alternative property and other costs.
He said he had suffered from severe stress and anxiety due to coping with the immense demands of the legal case and had suffered cardiac problems as a result of the "nightmare" situation. Council inspectors later decided to give a deadline of May 18, 2022 for all the mansions to be demolished.
A spokesperson for Bolton Council said: “We will of course continue to monitor the site in the coming weeks to ensure that the requirements of the enforcement notice are complied with in full.”
