Five houses must be torn down after they were built a third bigger than planned

A very costly error.

Five houses worth £1 million each are to be torn down after they were found to have been built up to a third bigger than allowed and in different locations. An inquiry dismissed appeals by the owners for the six-bed houses at Grundy Fold Farm near Bolton to remain, and they have now been told that they have a year to demolish the half-built homes. Sparkle Developments got the planning permission for the properties to be built on the West Pennine Moors in 2014. However finishing works were paused after a complaint in 2016, before the local authority issued an enforcement notice in 2018 for the entire development to be flattened. The homeowners appealed the 'excessive' orders, including Elan Raja, who said that he paid £1,057,000 for the plot, and has since spent more than £215,000 on renting an alternative property in the meantime. Raja said that the battle had been a 'nightmare' and that he has suffered cardiac problems as a result. The planning permission in place is for four dwellings and conversion of a former farmhouse, which was demolished and stands partially rebuilt. The owners of the houses have been told that they could bulldoze the homes and rebuild them in the right areas and at the right size. Bolton council says that the footprints of the current properties are up to 33 per cent too big. The legal representative for the council, Ian Ponter, said that harm had been caused to the green land they were on, as they were meant to be "sensitively sited in a hamlet." Ponter said: "The character of the area is scattered farms, individual rural houses and groups of houses clustered into small villages." But he added that the current properties represent a "significant departure away from the clear design intentions of the 2014 scheme."