Clampdown on ‘concealed’ Dartmoor house

It was only ever meant to be a tractor shed

The owners of a home on Dartmoor which planning officers say was ‘deliberately concealed’ will have to stop living in it.

The building only has permission for use as a tractor shed.

Dartmoor National Park Authority has voted to use a powerful Planning Enforcement Order (PEO) for the first time to demand that the building at South Tawton stops being used as a home.

A meeting of the authority’s development management committee heard that the owner of the building at Black Street Farm had concealed its use as a home since 2017 when it only had permission as an agricultural building.

At one time it would have been possible for them to continue living in it if enforcement action had not been taken within four years, but powers introduced in 2011 now mean councils can take action.

Planning officer James Aven explained that permission was granted  in 2007 for a tractor shed, but half of the building had since been used as an ‘unauthorised dwelling house.’

The national park authority got wind of this in July 2021, at which point the owner said it had been occupied since 2017, crossing the four-year threshold.

Mr Aven said if a landowner was deliberately concealing the building’s true use, magistrates could grant a PEO, and one was obtained in June 2022.

The High Court dismissed an appeal by the landowner earlier this year. A retrospective planning application was then lodged and refused, and that has now gone to a further appeal.

Mr Aven said the PEO would have to be activated by March next year.

“There was deliberate concealment,” he said, adding that getting magistrates to issue a PEO was a ‘very high bar to reach.’

Members went into a secret session with the press and public excluded to discuss what they claim is sensitive information on the issues, and then voted unanimously to authorise legal action to stop the building being used as a home.