Pensioner, 66, ordered to demolish eco-home
7 years in cabin, but ‘inhumane’ council says rules broken
AMIDLAND pensioner is facing the prospect of being homeless after council bosses ordered her to demolish the luxury log cabin she has lived in for the past seven years.
Brigid Eakins, 66, says she will be forced to live on the streets after town hall chiefs demanded she tear down the eco-home she built for herself in 2014.
The mother-of-three spent £59,000 of her life savings constructing the cabin from natural materials and applied for planning permission at the time in order to do so.
But she was told she did not require permission as there was already a mobile home on the site in the quaint hamlet of St Michaels, near Tenbury Wells.
But Herefordshire County Council has since performed a U-turn and told her the wooden structure is unauthorised and in breach of planning regulations.
The local authority has now ordered the divorced languages teacher to knock down her home by January next year following four complaints from neighbours.
It claims the building at Redwood Orchard goes beyond what was originally approved.
But Miss Eakins insists she has stuck exactly to the original plans.
She estimates the council has spent at least £75,000 of taxpayers’ cash on the bitter dispute over a property which cost just £59,000 to build.
Miss Eakins, who is also a Cambridge University examiner, has also been forced to fork out over £100,000 on legal fees during the battle to save her home.
She lives ‘off-grid’ at the 90ft x 50ft
open-plan eco-cabin which uses a generator and inverter to make her own electricity for heating and wifi.
She also treats her own waste water from the toilet with a septic tank and is surrounded by hundreds of trees which she planted herself.
Miss Eakins said: “I’ve put everything into this house and now I’m facing homelessness.
“That’s how draconian and inhumane they are.
“I’ll be out on the street in the middle of winter. How can they force someone like me who has lived here seven years onto the street?
“I’m very frightened and not looking forward to Christmas because knowing you have got to get out five
minutes after Christmas is not very nice. It’s just awful to think about.
“I thought I had permission to build the cabin, I did build it and then it all kicked off.
“All this is going to waste, which is a climate change nightmare, it is all going to be trashed.”
A Herefordshire County Council spokesman said: “The council has a responsibility to follow the adopted development plan and national planning policy aimed at promoting sustainable development in rural areas, and this has remained consistent throughout.
“The structure built in this location far exceeds the scope of the original plans, and has prompted several complaints from the local community.
“The council issued an enforcement notice for the unauthorised development.
“An appeal was dismissed by the Planning Inspectorate and a subsequent Judicial Review was also refused at permission stage.
“The site should have been cleared by August 2019, but due to the pandemic the council extended the time period for compliance until January 2022.
“We would remind all applicants that they build strictly to the approved plans and notify the council should they wish to make changes before undertaking development.”