Veteran horse caught in row over planning
A Hertfordshire horseowner is campaigning to keep a newly-built stable, which shelters his elderly horse, Carlo, in Kings Langley.
Roy Hansard has kept 37-year-old Carlo on a 1.5 acre plot for the past 12 years.
“We had a stable for him, but it was dilapidated and unsafe. It didn’t have planning permission but I still paid rates on it for all that time.”
Roy put up a new stable, but has now been refused planning permission by Three Rivers District Council and has been ordered to take it down.
A report from a government-planning inspector said that the new building “does not preserve the openness of the Green Belt”.Mr Hansard has lost an appeal against the decision and has now written to his MP, Kerry Pollard.
Mr Hansard maintains that as there are five other stables on adjoining paddocks, his new stable does not change the “openness” of the area.
The council says its objections are to the erection of an additional new stable.
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Chief development control officer, Michael Thorp, told Horse & Hound Online that the authority would be sympathetic to an application for a replacement of the old stable that has been there for 12 years.
“If an application should be made for a replacement stable of the same floor area and height of the existing stable and it would be of the same design or an improvement, the local planning authority would have no reason to refuse permission provided the existing old stable was removed.”
Meanwhile, as the row continues, Carlo faces an uncertain winter. “If the old horse has to winter out, I believe he will almost certainly die,” said Mr Hansard.
“He’s on restricted grazing because of laminitis and he has only two teeth. We have to heat his feed which he gets twice a day.”
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