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Lewes District Council’s planning applications committee has rejected a retrospective application for brick pillars on Chailey Common, East Sussex, at its meeting on 13 October.
The councillors threw out the application from the owners of White Cottage, Haywards Heath Road, North Chailey, because they considered the brick piers bearing the house name were incongruous in the common-land setting. They had been erected without planning permission, and their legality on the common was also in dispute.
Says Kate Ashbrook, the Open Spaces Society’s general secretary: ‘We are delighted that the planning committee rejected these ugly structures, which are an obtrusive domestication of this attractive rural area. The owners will now have to remove them and restore the common to its natural state.
‘Commons are of immense important, for their history, wildlife and landscape qualities and the opportunities they provide for informal recreation. Chailey Common is just such a place, and it should be protected not suburbanised.’