Let me tell you all how it went...
Well from the beging the inspector seemed really nice and extremely fair, straight away he pointed out many errors in the councils paper work, he told them off for racist behaviour towards us, he told them that they were being unreasonable, we went down the road of gypsy status to help us with our planning, he told them off for lack of preperation and not providing him with the information which was needed by him to make his decision.
He asked us lots of questions, but told us from the begining due to us not paying the full fees he could only determine the length of time we would be allowed to stay on our land and not the possibility of giving us planning permision
The council said 6 months was the max that we needed to stay her and we were asking for him to consider 2 years...
My man who kindly represented me for nothing, told them quite clearly that if it had been heard on all aspects he would have wiped the floor with the council and we would have easily been able to prove that permision should have been granted... mmm I wished i'd been able to find all the moneys but it was impossible for us... £700 is alot for us... well the enforcement officer brought legal representation, which the Inspector said was un reasonable behaviour in the hearing, as it was supposed to be informal chats not a court of law, Nick Morgan was the inforcement officer, hes nice enough chap to talk to but is young and full of the power his position gives him or well he thinks it gives him.it felt like he flexed his muscles bringing it to the appeal and then sat back expecting the inspector to do the dead, he hardly spoke and looked very uncomfortable throughout.
The inspector questioned us to determine our lifestyle, Jo's ethnicity, and basically what we were up to.. the councils solicitor argued that we were not Gypsies and accused us of lying, where they got told off agian, we were very truthful and tried to explain about our lifestyle, the children behaved perfectly throughout. after a couple of hours the inspector adjurned to site..
They wanted to inspect the contents of my freezer!!!!
So on site the inspector walked up and down asking the enforcement officer if he had a problem here, here and here, that was in 3 different location each time he responded no!! mmm
we went down the bottom of the land and showed him the pigs, one of which was looking like she was ready to pop... the inspector said that at any time I needed to go to her to help her I could leave the meeting.
We showed him all the chickens on our newly laid grass in there individual breading pens, Buff Orpingtons, Blue Jeursey Giants, Rhodes, Light Sussex, various young chicks we had bred, Mr. Morgan (the enforcement officer) rather stupidly admitted in the hearing in the village hall that he hadn't been on site for months not even driven past so scoffed and said what a mess it was, and that not even a blade of grass could be sustained on our land, well he lived to regret that..he had even put that in writting...
We have a large veg patch growing, garlic, onions, peas, various beans, sunflowers, grape vines, maize, potatoes, strawberrys, herbs, etc etc... he face was a picture he didnt know we had a huge field of grass now, he said" Wheres all the mud gone?" I explained to him that the pigs had done there work on that patch and now had moved on to another... we had a good 12" of grass growing.... on returning to the top of site where the caravan is the inspector finally asked well where do you have a problem?? He explained that he didnt like our caravan and our porta cabin.... so we argued that the cabin was ansillary to the farm we have freezers in there for the meats for sale and the farm records, medications and some tools kept in there, Mr. Morgan begged to differ he thought it was all nonsence and that is was primary use was for personal things, this is when he asked to be shown in, after looking and standing back outside they still said they felt the majority of the space was used for domestic use, I argued that the huge freezers contained meat for sale and the american fridge freezer that stood empty was for my hams etc when curing, he then asked to see the contents of my deep freeze, I laughed and thought he was joking but no... my freezer was inspected, it only had meat for sale in, with a very small amount of frozen milk.. I felt humiliated, it was left to the inspector to later decide on the final use of said cabin...
The inspector noted we had our American caravan here to do up ready for our travels, he pointed out that the council couldnt touch us on that, also that they could say nothing about the building materials on site or our cars, we chatted over a few things and felt quite hopeful but no desision was given on this day, but all that witnessed it said that it seemed very fair and that the coucil came over in quite a bad light, suggesting that it was a waste of tax payers moneys...We said our good byes and declarred a stay cation, we were told that the decission would be with us within 6 weeks.... we had 2 weeks of doing nothing other that feeding our animals, the kids loved it, but I soon got fed up of doing nothing...
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