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From The Times

July 30, 2007

Eco-house faces demolition for ‘negative impact on environment’

Tony Wrench relaxing inside his eco friendly green roundhouse in Brithdir Mawr near Newport in West Wales

Marcus Leroux

In an age obsessed with environmental sustainability, Tony Wrench and his partner Jane Faith would appear to be beyond reproach.

Their eco-home was made with local materials, its electricity supplied by solar and wind power and its heat kept in by a turf roof and straw insulation. They compost their sewage using a reed bed and make do without a fridge or washing machine.

But the couple have been told to demolish their beloved home - because it isn’t green enough.

The single-room roundhouse, based on a Celtic layout, is set in a protected part of the Pembrokeshire coast and has been refused planning permission because it “failed to make a positive environmental impact”. The couple, who grow their own food and make a modest living from music and woodcraft, feel they are being victimised despite doing more than most to reduce their carbon footprint.

The Hobbit House, as locals in Brithdir Mawr, near Newport, have dubbed it, is destined for demolition unless given a last-minute reprieve by the Welsh Assembly.

“You get the feeling that it does not matter what you do, they will always say ‘no’,” Mr Wrench said.

“We are doing everything we possibly can to reduce our carbon footprint. It is about as low as we can get and it demonstrates that an environmentally sustainable lifestyle is possible.”

He added: “This house is so beautiful to be in, and the garden so fruitful and bursting with life of all kinds, that I still cannot believe that in a world of such environmental spoilation and with spreading patches of such ugliness, there are still people paid to work on having this home demolished. What low impact proposal will ever withstand this level of nit-picking?” said Mr Wrench, a wood turner.

The Pembrokeshire Coast National Park Authority ruled that the dwelling would have a negative impact on dormice, bats and invertebrates. An ecologist’s report concluded that if permission were granted, the home would cause, “severe degradation of the National Park landscape”.

Mr Wrench, 61, plans to appeal against the decision, the latest step in a ten-year legal battle.

He spent £3,000 building the home a decade ago using local materials and insulating it with straw. A study confirmed that their carbon footprint was just a fraction of the national average, but the park authority says that is still not good enough.

Ifor Jones, the authority’s head of conservation, admitted that the rules were strict, but said that they applied to everyone. He said: “Yes, we do have high hurdles, but it is important that any development enhances the environment, rather than detracts from it. In this instance the location of the roundhouse and vegetable garden within an area of semi-natural vegetation, comprising woodland edge and unimproved wet grassland, is considered to have had negative impacts.”

Arnold Ward seems to complain about everything

Polly Fraser, London,

petty minded short sighted and politically motivated buearocracy at its upper most worst..

Its not just the sustainlable impact on their lives you need to measure but the knock on effect to the councils because of help towards their waste recycling target and provision of energy efficiency.

Sometimes too much weight is given to ecology reports and they are used to justify action by a bunch of narrow minded planners that at the end of they day probably just don't like the look of the house

Have been following the build of such houses closely, these people are trail blazers and an inspiration to us all

John Elliott, Salisbury,

I have watched the saga of the roundhouse over the past few years, regularly visiting Tony Wrench's website and becoming more and more concerned at the corruption of the green agenda by authorities and corporations. There are many things that Wrench would be legally able to do to his land - plough it all up and turn it into a chemically tortured monoculture, for instance - but manage it sympathetically, in harmony with the surrounding environment? Certainly not!

It seems that his attempt to show us how little we need to "live a life of luxury, well below the poverty line" - as he puts it in his book about building the house - is too threatening for those who would imprison the countryside in a sanitised bubble. Suitable for holidaymakers, maybe, but with no real work going on. No real culture, no real craftsmanship, no real community. The National Park philosophy seems to be that we need a dead countryside, devoid of real people with real lives, as they would only make a mess of it.

Jonathan Holt, Stevenage, UK

Will the establishment ever let the people be green on our terms?
Or will going green mean you can only buy from the corporations which line their pockets?

jon, portishead,

Mr Wrench is applying retrospectively under new regulations which is something that many people do and other people get away with entirely. Their ruling that this development is causing "severe degradation" to the landscape really exposes their ignorance of how the countryside works. Virtually no part of the British landscape is unmanaged by people. The small scale management by Mr Wrench is exactly the kind that forged the best bits of the British countryside we know today. Small field systems with extensive grazing are best for biodiversity, soil protection and tourism - just look at Dorset. What would happen if Mr Wrench has to move? The land would revert to unmanged scrub of little value to wildlife or the local economy. But the planners would be able to tick their box and go on to approve endless breeze-block farm buildings and the local golf course. Backward thinking at its worse.

D.H, Henshaw, Shrewsbury, Shropshire

I wish I could live in a home such as this! I commend Wrench and Faith for being environmentally-friendly role models. It is truly tragic that rules and regulations are enough to destroy even the most beautiful of philosophies. The house is a symbol, and if the demolition occurs it, too, is a symbol: one of the insensitive and uninspired crassness of modern life.

Andrea, Golden, Colorado, United States of America

From the information provided in the article it appears that it is the location that is the problem. As the saying apparently goes "Location, Location, Location". The same house, with planning permission, in a more suitable location would no doubt be a blessing.

Fiona Anderson, Camberley, Surrey

So the Park authority say the house isn't green enough? Fine, let them be good to their claimed standards, though, and demolish every other home (and second home!) in their jurisdiction with a worse carbon footprint.

We'll see how quickly the "high hurdles" get lowered then, eh?

Mark Langford, Beccles, Suffolk

Well (Arnold of Weybridge) that may be true, but (as in the case of Shambo the bull) the impression is left that a bunch of jobsworths are having a field day enforcing every last rule and regulation. I saw it in France, where poorly-paid functionaries took a malign delight in tormenting the hapless applicant over something they had it within their power to grant or withhold. A favourite trick was to say, at 15 minutes to 12, that their lunchbreak was about to start and come back at 2pm. When you got back at 2 pm they would say that you hadn't brought all the right documents, so come back tomorrow. And so on. Perhaps the authorities in the present instance are not being sadistic, but one is entitled to wonder...

J.Fletcher, Canterbury, UK

Had the house been built with the benefit of planning permission it would be immune from enforcement. Mr. Wrench has decided that the town planning rules and regulations to which the rest of us are subject in the public interest, do not apply to him.

Arnold Ward, Weybridge, Surrey, UK