When garden product manufacturer Mark Roberts built his six-foot wall outside his Caerphilly borough home in 2020 he had thought nothing of it. “It was a way to protect my home and it was for my privacy and security,” 62-year-old Mark told WalesOnline, proudly standing beside his wall at Aneurin Bevan Avenue in Gelligaer which he spent in excess of £5,000 building.
An unruly eight-foot conifer once stood there and was protruding through his old wall and into the pavement. “I’m proud of my home, I’m proud of my land. The estate is rundown and yet I try to do something nice and they try to destroy it.”
Frustrated ex-coal miner Mark is referring to Caerphilly council’s long-term plans to demolish the wall which protects his garden and home. The council wrote to Mark in October 2021, nearly two years after the wall was constructed, telling him someone had complained about the height of his wall. Following inspections by council officers he was then told the wall would need to be demolished.
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If a permanent structure such as a wall or a fence is more than a metre in height it requires council planning permission to build delivered through a formal planning process. Mark said he was unaware he needed that permission when he constructed the wall.
“The wall is three years old this month and I had a huge conifer hedge there,” Mark explained. “I took it all down because the wall was coming apart and it was getting dangerous. So I then built the wall - a nice strong wall, didn’t think anything of it, and then we had a letter from the council that someone had reported it.
“I was really shocked because the wall had been up for some time. I’m not the only one with a wall like this either. I’ve walked around the estate and there are a lot of walls like that and they’ve never had a problem.
“Another wall has been built across the road - a beautiful wall but a similar height to mine. But because no-one reported him he’s fine. If I reported all the people with high walls by here they’d go through the same thing, but I’d never do that, that’s not me.
“I asked all my neighbours and not one of them objected. They had letters from the council asking if they wanted to object, but none of them did.
“The council told me to put in a retrospective application for the wall, which I did. It cost me another £240 to put that in and then they told me it’d been refused.”
Mark said he felt he had little choice but to keep a boundary around his home for security reasons. “We’ve had problems with things going missing from the garden, kids running in and out of the garden. We had syringes in the hedges, beer cans. It was ridiculous.”
Running out of options, Mark decided to appeal to government department Planning and Environmental Decisions Wales (PEDW). “I appealed to PEDW and they came a week last Monday,” he recalled. “I could approach the gentleman and say who I was but I couldn’t speak to him about any concerns.”
This week Mark received the news that his appeal had largely been successful. The inspector concluded: “I see no purpose in requiring the demolition of the wall in its entirety, only for a lower wall constructed using the same materials as those used on the main dwelling to be immediately erected under development rights. Therefore, and within the context that the enforcement process should be remedial rather than punitive, I find that the requirements of the notice are excessive in this case. I shall therefore vary the requirements of the notice to include the option of reducing the height of those elements of the wall.”
Responding to the news, Mark said: “I’m happy with that outcome. It’s better than saying ‘take it all down’ isn’t it? Initially they wanted me to demolish it, so it’s progress. I’m not as gutted as I thought I would be. We now have two months to alter it. I’ve got to reduce it to a metre in height, so I’ve nearly got to half it. I feel like I’ve won but I also feel like I’ve lost a bit.”
A spokesman for Caerphilly council said: “The council, as Local Planning Authority (LPA), has powers to take enforcement action against development carried out without the appropriate consent under planning legislation. When investigating an alleged breach of planning control, the LPA always tries to ensure that decisions are taken concerning the most appropriate way forward in an effective and timely manner. However, where unauthorised development has adverse impacts that cannot be controlled adequately by condition, the LPA will normally serve an enforcement notice seeking its removal. There are rights of appeal against such enforcement notices to PEDW, which Mr Roberts has pursued in this case.”
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