A man has spent hundreds of pounds in a planning battle with the council after his neighbour complained about the lights on his new barn extension. James Tuttle, who says he needs the PIR motion lights on his home at the Kymin in Monmouth primarily for health and safety purposes while he works outdoors, has told WalesOnline he has been left shocked the £24 lights on his home have caused such a furore.
James, a smallholder, bought the barn conversion in 2016 in the rural setting which is in the Wye Valley area of outstanding natural beauty. The building had been converted from a redundant barn where bats had lived, meaning all planning applications had to accommodate bats.
James insists bats are not living in the buildings after he commissioned an expert to carry out his own ecological survey. The survey found that bats couldn’t live in the buildings because bat houses had been installed incorrectly by a previous owner.
