A WEALTHY dad is in a battle over a “bonkers” £1.6m row of four luxury homes for his three daughters – because they reckon they cannot afford to leave home.
Businessman Mark Jukes, 61, wants to build the four lavish homes-from-home for his three girls on a green field next to their plush family house.
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And the three sisters – schoolteacher Celyn, waitress Sara and saleswoman Carys – have put their names to the planning application to build four “affordable” homes next to each other.
But planning chiefs ruled that describing the four new detached houses as affordable for most local people was “bonkers”.
The three sisters sought permission for the three and four-bed detached homes in a line in an agricultural field at Cardigan, West Wales, next to their existing family home.
Each would have a house with en suite bedrooms, home office and plush open-plan kitchens opening onto the garden – with a fourth lined up for the sister of Mr Jukes.
Mr Jukes runs a successful storage and container business in the Welsh market town where the average house price is £231,000 with planning chiefs saying his plans are “in the £400,000 bracket”.
Agent Harries Planning Design Management said: “The applicants are the three daughters and sister of Mr Jukes. The three daughters currently reside at Drws Y Coed with their parents, who run Mark Jukes Containers, a very successful family business in Cardigan.
“The three sisters have lived at Drws Y Coed since birth.
“Ms Celyn Jukes is a secondary school teacher, Ms Sara Jukes works as a waitress at Yr Hen Printworks in Cardigan and Ms Carys Jukes is a sales executive at In the Welsh Wind.
“Finally, Mrs Mandy Jones (sister of Mr Jukes) is a hairdresser and runs a successful hair salon in Cardigan. Mandy has lived in Ceredigion for approximately 30 years, but she is currently living in rented accommodation.”
Mr Jukes has run his container business for more than 20 years on his land with his wife Eira, 58.
The agent said: “Due to their personal and family ties, it is such that they seek to build homes on the land to the rear of Drws Y Coed.
“This will provide independent living accommodation where they can settle and continue to live, work and raise a family within their local community.”
The planning application said property searches for alternative homes locally in the range of £300,000 to £350,000 showed “most in need of modernisation or repair”.
Speaking at the planning meeting, eldest sister Celyn, 30, said the Welsh-speaking family hoped to raise their children “in the community that we live in”.
She said: “It was pleasing that a lot of people had been supportive of this application.”
The family applied on the basis it was a “discount market property” – sold to someone on a low or middle income allowing someone to get on the property ladder when they wouldn’t usually be able to afford home ownership.
But Ceredigion County Council heard concerns have been raised by members of the public on the impact on neighbouring properties.
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One neighbour said: “This will impact greatly on our privacy.
“We can confirm that there are badgers here also an abundance of wildlife as you would expect in this countryside location including: bats, great spotted woodpecker, slow worms, dragonflies and owls to name but a few.
“If the trees are cut down and the hedgebank removed and re-sited it will obviously have a detrimental effect on the wildlife’s natural environment.
“We are of the opinion that the proposed development is totally out of character with this rural location. It would have a direct impact on the street residents” wellbeing and quality of life with the massive disruption of large tree felling, hedgebank removal and building of four large houses in an agricultural field.”
The family’s application was recommended for refusal because it is in open countryside – and could not be described as “affordable” to many people.
Planners said their bid “fails to demonstrate that the proposed occupiers of the dwellings are in real affordable housing need, with their search focusing on properties up to a value of £350k.”
And they added “there is no real need for the proposed occupiers to live at the application site, and is rather a desire to live close to the family”.
An appeal for the scheme to be backed was made by local county councillor Cllr Sian Maehrlein, who said the applicants were “a local family trying to stay in Cardigan.”
It was pointed out that the site was outside of Cardigan town boundaries but was connected by a walking distance footpath, and that views from the road of the development would be “almost non-existent”.
Head of planning Russell Hughes-Pickering accepted sympathies for providing homes for local people – but added: “I don’t understand why we’re having much of a discussion.”
He raised serious concerns about the size and scale of the build describing them as “blatantly not affordable” to give special permission for planning.
Mr Hughes-Pickering “Anyone looking at the application and thinking they are affordable houses is bonkers.
“These are not affordable houses: the size of the properties, the size of the plots, the value of the houses; they are just not affordable.”
He added: “My genuine feeling is we should refuse this application; there is no way you can look at this proposal and come to the conclusion these are affordable houses.
“They are not, they are four very large houses and four very extensive houses; if this is about looking after local people we’ve got to look about looking after local people ‘in the realm’.
“The majority of people looking for affordable houses are not looking at houses in the £400,000 bracket, and that’s why we have policies that look at the size of the dwellings.”
After the refusal, Mrs Jukes said: “As we intend to reapply I think it is inappropriate to comment at the moment.”
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