A farmer who built a castle hidden inside a stack of straw bales has lost a High Court bid to save it from being demolished.Robert Fidler, of Salfords, Surrey, built the house, complete with turrets, without planning permission. He kept it hidden until August 2006 and was ordered to tear it down by Reigate and Banstead Borough Council in 2008. Mr Fidler appealed on the basis that his house had stood for four years without anyone objecting to it. He claimed he only started building the structure when the council did not answer his planning application to turn a cowshed into a house.
A farmer who built a castle hidden inside a stack of straw bales has lost a High Court bid to save it from being demolished.
Robert Fidler, of Salfords, Surrey, built the house, complete with turrets, without planning permission.
He kept it hidden until August 2006 and was ordered to tear it down by Reigate and Banstead Borough Council in 2008.
Mr Fidler appealed on the basis that his house had stood for four years without anyone objecting to it.
He claimed he only started building the structure when the council did not answer his planning application to turn a cowshed into a house.
The inspector ruled that the removal of the straw bales constituted part of the building works and the four-year immunity rule would not apply.
World class legal pwnage.
But it's somewhat insane to pull down a functional and interesting building for purely legal reasons.
Though I suppose that one could argue that the building should be left standing, but the land and building confiscated by the Crown. That would work too.
- Jake If you only spend 20 minutes of the rest of your life on economics, go spend them here.
Building regs are really quite insane in the UK. I live in a listed area, and I'm supposed to get heritage officer consent if I consider changing the windows from single to double glazing.
This makes sense if someone puts UPVC into an old cottage, but it still applies even if the window is visually similar to the original - and some of the originals date from the 1970s and not the 1770s.
we can't just let people have their own way, can we? what kind of example would that be? pretty soon we'd have any tom dick or harry building forts and follies all over the landscape!
oh, wait.
this reminds me of the pettiness of some laws, like when they started fining people for putting wesson oil in their diesels.
how to win the public's hearts and minds, 101. love your government, because they care...
imagination, enterprise, poetic vision, just burrs to be picked off the magnificently bland, desouled greyness of 'ordered' life.
bumptious bureaucrats, they're just jealous. tall poppy syndrome. ~"When an inner situation is not made conscious, it appears outside as fate." Karl Jung~
