My £440,000 home ruined by gypsies
BEHIND its five-bar gate, Malcolm Godden’s farmhouse looks as if it is worth every penny of its £440,000 valuation.
Benefiting from a smart new extension to provide a garden room and study, the 19th-century home once boasted views across open farmland in what will soon be part of the new South Downs National Park.
That was until traveller Danny Shea and his family invoked a so-called gypsy right to settle in Fern Farm, the fields they had bought for £100,000 next door.
After failing in an attempt to build houses on the site, they applied for planning permission for two mobile homes, two touring caravans and a utility block. Three days later, without waiting for an answer, they moved in.
Now a gate used thousands of times on country walks by Mr Godden and other villagers in Greatham, Hampshire, is padlocked shut with barbed wire wound around its top.
The view from Mr Godden’s garden, in Wolfmere Lane, has been blocked by a pile of rotting straw bales, a container lorry and a chicken run has been built on the other side of his fence. Smoke from bonfires regularly sweeps across his lawns and terrace.
“To say they have made life a misery is an understatement,” said Mr Godden, 62, director of a freight forwarding company.
“It has really unsettled me, which is why I want to move. The trouble is I am also having a dispute with Mr Shea over the boundary to the property.
“A couple of people have come to look round the house but as soon as you mention the words ‘boundary dispute’ they don’t want to know. There’s probably another £50,000 been knocked off the value already.
“Mr Shea offered me £350,000 for the house and I told the estate agent to tell him to stick his offer where the sun doesn’t shine.
“I have lived here for 12 years and it was a lovely place with lovely views of the fields. Then Mr Shea just blatantly disregarded the planning laws and moved in. It is just not right.”
Mr Shea, 44, first drew attention to himself last year when he threatened to clamp cars parked outside homes in Wolfmere Lane because he had discovered he owned the verge.
Several people have reportedly paid him £3,000 a time to buy the little strips from him.
Last week he was involved in an extraordinary stand-off with villagers when he arrived at a meeting of the parish council planning committee to hear his activities roundly condemned from all sides.
The meeting was told that far from being gypsies, the family owned three houses in nearby Bordon worth £756,000. Mr Shea, who refused to address the meeting, retorted: “Not all gypsies are poor. They can earn money, you know.”
The council has now asked East Hampshire District Council to veto Mr Shea’s application so that removal proceedings can begin.
Mr Shea has refused to comment further, referring questions to his agent, Alison Heine, who specialises in gypsy planning applications.
She said that Mr Shea and his family relied on their gypsy status. The family includes his mother Amy, 79, an English Romany Gypsy, whose father Jack was a rag-and-bone man.
Mrs Heine, of Northwich, Cheshire, said that although the family owned property, Mr Shea and his son “continued to follow a travelling way of life” and preferred to live in caravans.
“The applicants have a genuine need for a site,” she said.
“They have strong local connections. They previously lived on this land and were able to buy this land again in 2008.
“The applicant’s gypsy-traveller status adds a very special dimension to this case. It permits exceptions to be considered on account of the need to facilitate this way of life.”
