Friday 19 November 2010

Cliff erosion/land value related fun

The Daily Mail article has before-after photos showing just how quickly cliffs can be eroded.

Interesting is this bit:

Glancing at the latest [sic] photograph it could be easily concluded that the two properties, a chalet and mobile home, have fallen victim to erosion and plunged into the sea. But the homes off Easton Lane have been deliberately destroyed as part of a landmark agreement to help homeowners cope with losing properties at the hands of Mother Nature.

The homes have been demolished after Paul England and several other villagers secured a lands right promise from Waveney District Council. Mr England was acting on behalf of his two children, Charles and Beth, who owned the two homes.

Under the pioneering deal the England family can move to safe land nearby and still keep residential land-use rights so he can build similar homes under planning law. The agreement, believed to be the first of its kind in the country, was set up as it was feared Mr England would lose all his rights if his land vanished due to erosion over the winter.

As a result the family could knock down their homes as they knew when they purchased new land they could build similar ones again without any planning wrangles.


Aha... before I read that bit, I was going to say that under LVT, homes so close to the cliff edge would hardly pay any, to compensate them for the imminent loss of the bricks'n'mortar value (I doubt whether they can get insurance for that!), but if it is the case that you can pick up the planning permission, which makes up half the value of the house, and take it with you, then there's no reason to give owners of cliff-edge land any discounts, is there?

This bit sticks in the craw: "... it was feared that Mr England would lose all his rights if his land vanished..." We can't have landowners ever losing a penny, can we now?

Murky is why Mr England put the homes in his children's names. They can't be minors, as minors can't be the registered owners of land in England; if they are adults, then why didn't they appeal on their own behalf?

3 comments:

James Higham said...

That children's names bit sounded a bit suss.

Bayard said...

Looks to me like a classic case of put-a-mobile-home-on-a-piece-of-land-for-ten-years-and-then-get-planning-permission to me. Presumably the LA didn't try too hard to get them off, knowing the land would soon fall into the sea, however they reckoned without rampant HOism. What's the betting that the mobile home and tatty chalet are transmogrified into two three-bed-with-garage detached houses a safe distance away from the sea? I'm off to buy some land on the Norfolk coast!

Mark Wadsworth said...

JH, very suspect (but I can't work out what the angle is).

B, good grief, now I look a little more closely, I see it wasn't a house at all, it was a teeny tiny garden shed, and the caravan isn't too impressive either (presumably they towed this away in time?).

Question: by how much has the price of plots of land on the Norfolk coast just gone up?