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Roundhouse refused planning yet again

Posted: 31/07/2007

Tony Wrench and Jane Faith's roundhouse at Brithdir Mawr, is again under threat. The Pembrokeshire dwelling has been refused retrospective planning permission on the grounds that it “failed to make a positive environmental impact”. Despite fighting the planning authorities for 10 years, and despite the apparently pioneering decision last year by Pembrokeshire County Councl to grant planning permission for Low Impact Dwellings, the couple's home is destined for demolition unless given a last-minute reprieve by the Welsh Assembly.

“You get the feeling that it does not matter what you do, they will always say ‘no’,” said Wrench.

“We are doing everything we possibly can to reduce our carbon footprint. It is about as low as we can get and it demonstrates that an environmentally sustainable lifestyle is possible.”

He added: “This house is so beautiful to be in, and the garden so fruitful and bursting with life of all kinds, that I still cannot believe that in a world of such environmental spoilation and with spreading patches of such ugliness, there are still people paid to work on having this home demolished. What low impact proposal will ever withstand this level of nit-picking?” said Wrench, who earns a small living as a musician and wood turner.

The Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority ruled that the dwelling would have a negative impact on dormice, bats and invertebrates. An ecologist’s report concluded that if permission were granted, the unobtrusive building and its garden would cause, “severe degradation of the National Park landscape”.

Wrench, 61, plans to appeal against the decision. Modelled on iron age houses, similar to those reconstructed as a tourist attraction at nearby Castell Henllys, his home cost £3,000 to build a decade ago using local materials such as forestry thinnings, mud, straw and recycled windows. A study confirmed the home's carbon footprint was just a fraction of the national average, but the park authority says that is still not good enough.

Under the new criteria, Wrench had to prove he could meet 75% of his needs - energy, food etc - from his smallholding; the planners decided there weren't enough trees to support him. The Roundhouse was also rejected on environmental grounds.

Wrench disagrees with the planners who say that he has "improved" the grassland surrounding the house in a negative way - previously it was infested with bracken, which the Park authorities want to spray on the mountainside nearby. In planning terms "unimproved" grassland is more desirable but he is adamant that biodiversity has flourished since occupation started. His son, a botanist, has logged 73 species in his meadow, which includes a reed bed drainage system.

Ifor Jones, the authority’s head of conservation, admitted that the rules were strict, but said that they applied to everyone. He said: “Yes, we do have high hurdles, but it is important that any development enhances the environment, rather than detracts from it. In this instance the location of the roundhouse and vegetable garden within an area of semi-natural vegetation, comprising woodland edge and unimproved wet grassland, is considered to have had negative impacts.”

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