A millionaire property developer has been ordered to demolish 11 new houses he has built in a market town because he was given permissi...
A millionaire property developer has been ordered to demolish 11 new houses he has built in a market town because he was given permission for only nine.
Hekmat Kaveh's company Crystalight said the extra houses were erected due to a blunder by the builders he employed to carry out the development.
But the council insisted that the breaches of permission for the site in Newent, Gloucestershire, are so extensive that all 11 houses must be bulldozed.
The properties - surrounded by listed buildings - have been built too high and have also spread onto surrounding land that was not included in the permission.
The development is within a conservation zone, and consent for the nine houses was granted by a Government planning inspector subject to numerous conditions.
But Forest of Dean councillors were told in Coleford that the estate was nothing like the one that was approved - and enforcement action is now the only way forward.
An officer said a representative of the developer said the two extra houses had been 'commenced prematurely' in error and the builder responsible was no longer on site.
Developers also claimed that demolition had already started on the two extra houses in the gardens - and that they were 'open to discussions seeking a way forward'.
Councillor Lynn Sterry asked if the Forest of Dean District Council stood a 'a cat in hell's chance' of getting the many breaches rectified without a full demolition order.
But the planning committee was told that spreading the estate onto neighbouring land had invalidated the current permission - and nothing else could be done.
'The bottom line is nothing on this site has been built in accordance with the action plan and therefore there is no planning permission,' said development control manager Clive Reynolds.
'That means this council has no control over how that site is finished off and I don't think that's an acceptable place to be. If we go to the trouble of negotiating the design, the layout and the appearance of a development and the developer just decides to go and do something different, then we need to seek to control that.
'We don't have a planning application in so they only means control is enforcement.'
He said the developer could possibly eventually win permission for some of the changes that have taken place, but not for two extra homes in the rear gardens of adjoining listed buildings.
'We don't have the power to to modify things,' he said. 'We can't say put the chimneys back on, put the gardens and parking where they should be.
'The only power we have is to take the ultimate step and see where it takes us.'
Several councillors questioned why nobody spotted that the foundations for the nine houses with planning permission were different than agreed when they were passed by building regulators.
Planning chairman Philip Burford said that the national system divided building control from planning and allowed developers to hire their own inspectors rather than use the council team.
He told councillors to blame the developer and not their own officials for something out of the ordinary.
'It's not the job of building inspectors to confirm it is being built in line with planning permission. It's completely separate,' he said.
'Having been on the planning committee for almost 12 years, (it is) the first time I have seen anything remotely like this.'
Councillor Bruce Hogan said: 'If we take the attitude that the left hand does not have to know what the right hand is doing, then we are missing a trick.
'It would not take a whole lot of effort to make sure that when building control are going in during the first foundations stages, the footings are checked to make sure they are in the right place before any concrete is poured.'
Councillors voted to give Crystalight nine months to demolish the estate.
The company is led by Mr Kaveh, a retired architect who once pledged £100,000 to help buy a Banksy artwork that appeared on a Cheltenham house.
He was not in the meeting as developers were told to 'demolish all of the building works and dig out all foundations' and return the site to how it was before work started.
But one member of the committee said the system was so slow it could be years before the bullozers moved onto the site which is currently mothballed.
A spokesman for Crystalight said Mr Kaveh was currently 'on holiday'.
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