It's just not tennis!

Court built in Devon area of special interest

The founder of the White Stuff fashion and lifestyle brand has asked for permission to plant more than 1,000 new trees to avoid having to tear down a building, skateboard park and tennis court he built without permission in a Devon beauty spot.

Millionaire fashion boss Sean Thomas built a two-storey double garage on farmland behind his house at Gerston Point in the South Hams, a site is in the South Devon Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty and alongside the Salcombe to Kingsbridge Estuary Site of Special Scientific Interest.

Mr Thomas and his wife subsequently acquired an adjoining strip of agricultural land to build the tennis court, skate park and garage, which was finished in 2016.

They submitted a retrospective application for change of use of land to domestic use with carport and storage building after a complaint to the council from a resident in nearby West Alvington.

But in September 2019, South Hams planners rejected the application as it was considered to a development that represented an unwelcome and incongruous intrusion into an undeveloped countryside location, and Mr Thomas and his wife were told that the land must be returned to its former condition.

Now though, a second retrospective planning application has been submitted to the council which claims the new plans would demonstrate an unequivocal enhancement of the protected landscape in which the development is located and a clear net biodiversity gain.

The new application includes the substantial new planting of over 1,000 native trees is proposed.

The planning statement submitted says: “This directly follows the professional advice of Landscape Consultants and the planting includes additional proposed planting along the site boundary to help further screen the minimally visible building, together with a significant level of new tree planting and landscape management along the estuary fringes.”

A series of ecological improvement and mitigation measures are also proposed, including a bat roost, bird boxes and the planting of wild flowers along the estuary, as well as a reed clearance and de-silting of a wetland area.

And following concerns, Mr Thomas has proposed darkening the colour of the existing roof of the building to enable it to assimilate more successfully into the wider landscape.

The statement adds: “The cumulative impact of the substantive enhancement measures will unequivocally provide a very significant positive landscape and ecological enhancement of both the setting of the application site and the wider locality within the AONB.

“This revised planning application has robustly demonstrated an unequivocal enhancement of the protected landscape in which the development is located and a clear net biodiversity gain by proposing a significant level of additional landscape and ecological mitigation and enhancement measures”

Conservation charity the South Hams Society though has questioned why enforcement action has not yet been taken, and so far, two objections to the revised scheme have been made, one saying: “This is a protected site as far as I was aware, and the owner was told to stop building and return the land back to origins. I guess when you have money the rules don’t apply.”

South Hams District Council planners will determine the fate of the application at a later date.