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.
Shortly after he bought the barn James applied for permission to build the extension and was told by the council he could extend. The final report in 2020 specified: “No lighting or lighting fixtures shall be attached to or be positioned in the curtilage so as to illuminate the elevations of the building."
James said on the advice of a planning consultant he believes this means he can have lights on his building facing his garden, but cannot have lights in his garden facing his home. But after a neighbour decided to complain about the lights in 2021 James became embroiled in a dispute with the council’s planning department that has now gone to Planning and Environment Decisions Wales (PEDW).
An exhausting and costly process has left James perplexed. “My planning consultant has said the wording means I can have lights on my building because the lights don’t illuminate the face of the building, but someone complained and a planner came out and they said I’m in breach of the condition,” he said.
“I said: ‘I don’t have lights in the garden facing onto the house, I have lights on the house facing into the garden, so I’m not in breach.’ If the council didn’t want me to have lights on the extension they should have made that part of the conditions.”
Following the council inspector’s visit James was told he could apply to the planning department to have the lights condition removed. “I was forced to make a planning application to remove the condition for lights in or on the curtilage. So I made the application. I’ve argued the condition is not necessary because there are no bats living here.”
That application was rejected by the council's planning department, who say the lights condition is "unambiguous", but James said he is convinced he is right and is hopeful the appeal will favour him. To add to the confusion, James said almost identical lights on his other two buildings, installed by the previous owner, received planning permission.
“Surrounding buildings have PIR lights on them and so have my other two buildings,” he continued. “But they’re saying my house can’t have lights. Where is the logic in that?
“If they want to complain they can but the basis of the complaints are nonsensical. They say my lights shine into bedrooms, another neighbour has been and said it’s impossible. It is impossible, the lights face in a completely different direction. I’m on a smallholding and the nearest house is 80 or 90 metres from me and then on three sides of me it’s hundreds of acres of woodland.
“I live and work on a smallholding and I’m in and out of my house all the time throughout the year. How many people don’t have lights on their house? It is about principle but it’s also health and safety. The ridiculous thing is at one gable of the building it’s wall to floor glass, with light that can spill out naturally anyway.
“It’s taken a considerable amount of time to decide whether I can have these lights. This process will have cost the taxpayer a considerable amount of money and the council a considerable amount of time. They got back to me and rejected the application and said I have to appeal to the Welsh Government and PEDW, which is more time and more costly to the taxpayer.”
A spokesperson for Monmouthshire County Council said: “Monmouthshire County Council has a duty to safeguard nature conservation interests on all development proposals. The removal of the imposed condition relating to external lighting has the potential to be harmful to roosting/foraging opportunities for species of conservation concern in a particular sensitive location within the Wye Valley area of outstanding natural beauty. It is worth noting that alternative lighting solutions that do not illuminate the elevations of the building could be acceptable at the site and the council would work with any party to consider alternative options that would preserve wildlife.”
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