Tuesday - October 06, 2009

Homeowner who won right to protect his home falling into the sea faces fresh legal challenge

Woo-Hoo ... look at this photo. In fact, if you go to the link you will be able to see an enlarged version.

What is it with conservation that a guy has to live with the threat of home loss.  Oh well.  Some castles aren’t meant to be an Englishman’s home I guess.

Peter Boggis, 78, has had his legal victory in the fight to prevent his home falling into the sea challenged by a conservation watchdog

By Daily Mail Reporter
Last updated at 2:25 PM on 06th October 2009

A legal victory won by a modern-day King Canute in his fight to prevent his home falling into the sea was challenged by a conservation watchdog in the Court of Appeal today.

Natural England wants fossil-bearing cliffs near Southwold, in Suffolk, to be allowed to erode naturally for scientific reasons.

It has disputed a High Court ruling made last December that its plan was unlawful because it failed to carry out an assessment of how a nearby wildlife haven might be affected.

Since 2002, retired engineer Peter Boggis, 78, has spent tens of thousands of pounds installing his own ‘soft’ sea defences built from 250,000 tonnes of compacted clay soil in front of cliffs near his Easton Bavents home.

He said this has so far saved more than eight acres of land and four properties ’at no cost to the nation’ and that his efforts would, if anything, slow down the expected loss of habitat on the wildlife site.

Mr Boggis wants to be allowed to maintain his defences to prevent further erosion of the cliffs.

He said the decision of a conservation organisation to allow the sea to destroy people’s homes was ‘immoral and totally unsatisfactory’.

In 2006, Natural England notified a coastal Site of Special Scientific Interest (SSSI) between Southwold in the south and Kessingland in the north.
peter Boggis

Barrier: Mr Boggis has spent thousands of pounds building ‘soft’ sea defences using 250,000 tonnes of compacted clay soil in front of cliffs

In the High Court, Mr Justice Blair said the evidence showed that part of the intention of the SSSI was to allow the destruction of Mr Boggis’s defences, for which consent was unlikely to be given, and the rapid erosion of the cliffs behind them.

The judge ruled this amounted to ‘a plan or project’ which might have an effect on a special protection area (SPA) for birds - particularly the little tern, bittern and marsh harrier - which is located to the north of Mr Boggis’s sea defences.

An assessment of the risk to the SPA should have been carried out to comply with the EU Habitats Directive, the judge said.

Natural England said it sympathised with the situation faced by Mr Boggis and his neighbours, but was concerned that the High Court judgement set a precedent requiring environmental assessments to be carried out when they were entirely unnecessary.

When the case was heard in November last year, Mr Boggis’s lawyer Gregory Jones told the court that, in contrast to King Canute, the 11th century king who made his futile attempt to hold back the tide in order to demonstrate to his followers how insignificant his power was compared with that of God, Mr Boggis’s sea defences had been highly effective.

John Howell QC, acting for Natural England, today told Lords Justices Mummery, Longmore and Sullivan at a three-day appeal hearing in London that Mr Boggis built his sea defences without planning permission or an environmental impact assessment.

He pointed out that the High Court had rejected all the arguments by Mr Boggis and the Easton Bavents Conservation group to the effect that the notification of the SSSI was in itself unlawful.

ENLARGED PHOTO AND SOURCE

Posted by peiper     on 10/06/2009 at 10:34 AM   
Filed Under: • Environment • UK •  
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