The legal cost of running a tourist venue
Hello all, Nigel Marsh here, owner of mYminibreak and manager/warden of Hunstanton Camping & Glamping, Norfolk Coastal Cottages, and Norfolk Accommodation.
As I'm sure many in the leisure industry may know, running a public event or public facility can be troublesome, trying, and frustrating. Among the long laundry list of things to go through, there are ecology reports, commercial electric wiring conditions, safety reports, planning applications, planning refusals, planning appeals, planning enforcements, seeking planning advice from consultants, planning enforcement consultants advice, magistrates hearings, alleged criminal proceedings, environmental impacts, habitats regulation assessments, and much, much more. However, no process or bit of work has been so tedious, temperamental, and utterly weighted against reason as the various legal battles I've had to suffer through with the authorities.
Since 2018, I've been engaged in three separate legal disputes with the local authorities and in each battle, I've had to put up with high legal costs, delayed decisions, and flimsy excuses that the council has scrounged up to hinder progress at every step. Time and time again I have proven that my planned developments are lawful, and time and time again the council has returned with the most minor nitpick which, more often than not, does not even break the law. It almost feels like there is a rogue planning officer or some higher-up figurehead pulling the strings who I have taken to calling The Muppet Master!
These three legal disputes regard the Hunstanton Camping & Glamping site, the Grainstore on that site, entry to the site, and two other sites in Holme-next-the-Sea and Burnham Market. In each one of these separate cases, it feels like I have been forced to appeal due to The Muppet Master instructing planning officers to find facts to fit their desired results, rather than the lawful and correct process of analysing facts to then decide on the result.
Backstory of me and the site
Back in 2016 an old, dilapidated farm went into auction to be sold off to the highest bidder. As a fan of both challenges and providing for people and local communities, I saw the farm as an opportunity and (without the prior knowledge or blessing of my wife) went to bid on a property I couldn't really afford.
I was surprised, then, that I won the bid with a £10,000 deposit.
Thus began my ownership of Beach Farm on 72 South Beach Road: a run-down site with a field and a handful of agricultural buildings, including a Grainstore, an Old Barn, and a cow shed - all dilapidated and nigh-unusable, of course.
The site as it was in 2016. As you can see, we had a lot of work to do!
So, I set to work, both on the site and in writing since I had to undertake conveyancing myself due to a lack of funds. I had the buildings and the planning consent to turn them into 3 holiday homes by the beach, something which I thought, at the time, would make a nice retirement project.
The first 12 months of this project were great! As I undertook a full renovation of the site to save it from the miserable state it was in. Building, digging, mowing, tending, and swimming in the sea on breaks. I wanted to transform this bleak eyesore into something that not only looked beautiful but could also serve people looking for a short stay near an amazing beach.
7 years after purchase, the site is now nearly unrecognisable from the state I got it in.
Of course, the site's history goes back much, much farther, as the original state of the buildings suggests. In fact, the site's history goes back at least as far as the 1930s, when the owner at the time - Thomas Raines - converted his farm into a holiday site for campers and caravans, accommodating for camping trends of the time. He even went as far as to get planning permission for a supply of water to the site in 1935 in order to provide fresh water to the campgoers!
A couple of decades later, in 1953, aerial photos were taken of the Norfolk coastline to visualise the damage of the North Sea Flood of 1953. Beach Farm appears in these photos in full use as a caravan and campsite, as it is at a high point and therefore makes for a safe retreat from flood waters.
This is a great illustration of the site's rich history as well as its unique natural defences; benefitting from both being at a high point compared to the surrounding areas, and the natural banks that flank the site.
Our site has a long, storied history, stretching back over 90 years. Following its initial time as a camping and caravanning site, the farm went back to agricultural use, with a new grainstore built in 1988 that still stands today. This agricultural use continued until 2013 when the site was sold by Wild Ken Hill.
In spite of my prudence and conscientiousness in these endeavours, I've hit repeated roadblocks - not from any of the actual work involved, or even in preservation measures, but instead from the council, who have hindered me and this campsite at every step.
Whether it's been in using the site as a caravan and campsite, building a toilet block, converting a disused grainstore into a hotel, or even simply having an entry point to the site; I've followed the law to the letter, applied for appropriate planning applications, gone in-depth into research what I'm allowed to do, and yet still I hit refusals, enforcements, and injunctions that I have to spend time and money on fighting.
