Couple devastated by council decision to convert £10,000 dream garden BACK to wasteland
A COUPLE who spent £10,00 transforming wasteland into their dream garden have been told they have to convert it back.
Glyn and Katie Garbett, from Rotherham, South Yorkshire, spent £10,000 clearing rubble and doing up the 78sqm strip after buying the land over a year ago – only to be told it is green belt.
The couple bought the patch to grow vegetables and create a play area for daughters Daisy, nine, and Molly, seven, and claim the fact it was green belt land wasn’t brought to their attention.
Instead, they claim they were told to adhere to certain conditions such as building a fence within a certain period of time – but they’ve since been told they have to take the fence down.
They have branded the farce “pathetic” as no one looks onto the land, and claim it is in far better condition now than it was before.
Family who spent £10,000 converting wasteland into their dream garden are told to let it become overgrown again because it was greenbelt land
- Glyn and Katie Garbett cleared rubble and transformed 840 sq ft strip
- Bought patch to grow vegetables and create play area for daughters
- But couple from Rotherham were then told that area is green belt land
- Council says Garbetts didn’t demonstrate ‘very special circumstances’
A couple who spent £10,000 transforming wasteland into their dream garden have been told they have to convert it back.
Glyn, 45, and Katie Garbett, 38, from Rotherham, South Yorkshire, cleared rubble and dramatically improved the 840 sq ft strip after buying the land over a year ago.
But the couple, who bought the patch to grow vegetables and create a play area for daughters Daisy, nine, and Molly, seven, were then told that it is green belt land.
Read about Rotherham’s Award Winning Planning Department:
Council planning service shows Rotherham is open for business
Rotherham Planning Service is a finalist in the category for Local Authority Planning Team of the Year at the Royal Town Planning Institute’s (RTPI) Awards for Planning Excellence 2018. The RTPI Awards are the most established and respected awards in … Continue reading
Rotherham Politics 
But this cannot surely be right, because according to themselves, Rotherham planners are ” proud to be recognised as the top performing planning authority in the country, but also one which has a flexible, positive and pro-development attitude”
Er, as regards “flexible, positive and pro-development attitude”, that is only so long as it applies to their own land and they are reaping the rewards. I refer of course to the situation where they gave planning permission to develop their own GREENBELT land at Rother Valley Park for a, yet again, failed head-in-the-clouds scheme where they thought they were going to make loads of dosh to keep themselves in the big fat salaries that they are so accustomed to.
The average guy doing a bit to tidy up his locality represents an easy target to our self aggrandising planners and they will readily stomp all over him.
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Are they really recognised as a top performing planning authority? The ongoing Stubbin Lane case (allowing an extension to be built without planning permission, granting retrospective planning permission a year later and then having to be told the extension was a) on highway and therefore unlawful and b) even if it hadn’t been highway not on land belonging to the builder of the extension so they had no authority to grant planning permission anyway) would seem to make a mockery of any such claim.
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So very true Trambuster
No ‘even handness’ or consistency when it comes to using the correct procedures by Planning is there?
Dame Louise Casey made that a main finding in her Inspection of Rotherham Borough Council 2015.
Tut, tut, tut and Rotherham Planners think they are a ‘top performing authority’. Delusional or what?
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I know almost nothing about Planning law (and ,from this extraordinary tale, neither do RMBC Planners) but surely there must be some course of Appeal against totally bizarre decision ?Objectors to Planning Board decisions have the opportunity to put their objections both to RMBC, before a decision is made to allow a development to go ahead , and then to a Government Inspector should their original objections be dismissed by RMBC ! Why is this not the same for this unfortunate couple who’s only mistake was to do everything by the book, only to be “led up the garden path” (no pun intended) by a bunch of fools who are manifestly shown to be incompetent in this instance ?
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Why are the councillor’s on the planning committee not taking up this and investigating and asking questions why the couple were not properly informed before buying this waste land
Their is a least three opposition councillor’s on the planning so why are they not looking into this
This again total incompitance from highly paid unfit for purpose council officers and highly paid unfit for purpose disgraced chair of planning
Also I see the Commissioners have all but disapered but still claiming over £600 per day
So what as really improved in this Council
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Well, in answer to that- your departure.
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