The owners of a 115-year-old garden centre have had to shut half of the buildings on their site after the council told them they hadn’t asked for permission to build them. Anthony and Nicola Halse, who own Sunnyside Nurseries in Langstone in Newport, spent two years trying to win approval for the three colourful cabins on their site which they constructed after being told they didn’t need planning approval.
Nicola had operated a gifts business from one of the cabins since 2018 while long-running Newport grocer Rae Barton fruit and veg shop took over the running of one cabin in 2020 and Anthony’s sister opened an arts and crafts space in the other.
Sunnyside became a hub for visitors with the cabins and was proving a real success. Anthony said: “There is obviously a need for a site like this in Langstone as there is seldom a day when it is not mentioned by members of the public how nice it is to visit our premises.” But in August 2020 Newport City Council sent an enforcement notice to the couple demanding they cease operating from the cabins.
In response Anthony and Nicola tried for two years to persuade the council to accept their cabins with appeals but the council’s planning officers were steadfast in their judgement that the cabins were not in keeping with the countryside on the site, which only has permission for agricultural use. The nurseries and the café on the site will remain open. A spokesperson for the council said: “Permission was refused for the three retail units on the grounds that they would have a significant adverse effect on sustainability and were not justified on this rural site.”
Thursday, February 23 is the official deadline the council gave the couple to stop operating at the cabins, but Nicola has already packed in her gift shop and Anthony’s sister has stopped running the arts and crafts service. Richard Soar has worked at the fruit and veg shop - Rae Barton’s only store - right up to the deadline but will now have to leave. Anthony said six people will lose their jobs as a result of the decision and it has cost them £12,500 in administration costs.
Speaking on Thursday Anthony said: “We’re going to leave the cabins until the weather dries the wood out because if we try and take them down now then we’d cause more damage than they’re worth. We can’t use them at all, nothing has changed.”
Nicola, who closed the gift shop at Christmas, said it was the most she’d ever enjoyed a job because it helped her with her fibromyalgia and encephalomyelitis (ME). “It just feels like everything has been taken away from me,” she said.
“At the moment Nicola isn’t doing much, and she needs an income from somewhere, but we can’t set another building up because we’ll have the same problem again,” Anthony continued. “She’s been offered a unit in Newport but the costs are prohibitive. When you look at the cost of travel and then business rates etc and that’s the end of that.”
Explaining his understanding of the council’s decision, Anthony said: “They regard our entire site as being agricultural and not mixed use. They say it’s not in keeping with the countryside to have retail units on it and that the countryside must be protected at all costs.
“The community has been brilliant with us. We’ve had over 4,000 people sign a petition supporting us but it counts for nothing - absolutely nothing. We’ll keep going. We’re a 115-year-old business and we’ll keep operating the nurseries and the cafe here.”
A Newport City Council spokesperson said: "The owners are fully aware of why they have been asked to remove the cabins as they have been the subject of a number of planning applications as well as an unsuccessful appeal against decisions to refuse planning permission and an enforcement notice. Planning applications for a log cabin outbuilding and the retention of a single-storey workshop on the nurseries site in Chepstow Road were refused on more than one occasion in 2020.
"In 2021, an application was made seeking consent for the retention of three cabins and a storage/workshop on what is classed as an agricultural site in the countryside. Permission was refused for the three retail units on the grounds that they would have a significant adverse effect on sustainability and were not justified on this rural site.
"It was believed the proposal set an undesirable precedent for additional similar units/uses thereby resulting in a harmful proliferation of unjustified development. An appeal into the refusal of planning permission and the enforcement notice was dealt with by an independent inspector from Planning and Environment Decisions Wales. The inspector found in favour of the council on all points: dismissing the appeal against the refusal of planning permission and upholding the enforcement notice."
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