Latest news with #NNDC
Wales Online
13 hours ago
- Business
- Wales Online
Omaze dream house winner and former Miss Wales finalist still hasn't had keys to £6m property
Omaze dream house winner and former Miss Wales finalist still hasn't had keys to £6m property The property is bogged down in a planning row which might even mean it has to be altered before it can be passed on to Vicky Curtis-Cresswell Omaze Million Pound House Norfolk winner Victoria Curtis-Cresswell with husband Dale (Image: Mark Field Photography / Omaze ) A former Miss Wales finalist who won a £6m Norfolk coastal home is still waiting to receive the keys due to unresolved planning breaches. Vicky Curtis-Cresswell, 38, had never owned her own home and was living with her family until she won the spectacular property. Vicky stated that winning the luxury Blakeney property in an Omaze competition three months ago had "changed her life forever". Before she won the huge prize, she lived with her husband Dale, 41, and their young daughter at her in-law's three-bedroom house in Wales, as the family were in the process of house hunting for a rental property. However, her intention to sell the multi-million pound mansion is currently on hold after an investigation revealed that the Larkfields property was constructed differently from the approved plans. When the win was announced, Vicky said she hoped to sell the mansion to "buy another amazing house somewhere in Wales." The house in Norfolk won by Victoria Curtis-Cresswell in the Omaze Million Pound House Draw (Image: Omaze ) Omaze, a company that purchases luxury properties as competition prizes to raise funds for charity, has pledged to rectify a series of planning breaches and cover any associated costs before transferring ownership. Article continues below However, it may be a while before the 38-year-old from south Wales can fully enjoy her windfall, as Omaze could be embroiled in a protracted planning dispute with North Norfolk District Council. The company is in the process of submitting a retrospective planning application, aiming to secure permission for any construction work that lacked prior approval. Details regarding the issues uncovered during the council's investigation have not yet been publicly disclosed. Love dreamy Welsh homes? Sign up to our newsletter here However, an examination of planning documents and photographs of the property suggests that it has been built larger than permitted. Other potential planning infringements include a tennis court and swimming pool, which seemingly lack the required approvals. A swimming pool at the property Omaze has stated that the planning discrepancies were not disclosed during the evaluations and inspections carried out prior to its purchase. A spokesperson for Omaze said: "Omaze continues to work with North Norfolk District Council (NNDC) in relation to recommendations made regarding the property in Norfolk. "Omaze has submitted a pre-application to the council and is submitting a retrospective planning application. "Omaze will transfer ownership of the property to the winner once all planning matters are resolved." In response, NNDC proposed a list of measures for Omaze to address the issues at hand. A representative for NNDC remarked: "At present we are waiting for an application to be submitted by the owners to try and regularise the current breaches of planning control. "We are expecting an application to be submitted by the end of this month." However, there is no guarantee Omaze will be granted retrospective permission for the breaches. The application could be refused, which might result in the council taking enforcement action against Omaze to force it to make changes. Such a scenario would mirror the case of Arcady – the luxurious Cley residence built by West End producer Adam Speigel, who was ordered to reconstruct his property following a protracted planning row over deviations from the original design. The fiasco has potentially cost him millions of pounds to rectify the issues. Throughout the investigation, Omaze has consistently reassured the public that any prize winner would not be burdened with any potential costs arising from the planning discrepancies. Larkfields, a grand three-bedroom home modelled after the opulent mansions in New York's exclusive Hamptons area, was touted as Omaze's largest ever prize draw. The competition raised millions of pounds for Comic Relief. However, the discovery of planning violations cast a shadow over the high-profile contest, which was organised for Red Nose Day. Omaze initially planned to announce the winner live on BBC One, but this plan was scrapped following the revelations about the planning breaches. Article continues below Founded in the US, the company pledges at least 17% of the funds raised through its prize draws will go to charities.
BBC News
10-04-2025
- BBC News
Sheringham's 24-hour kayak hire suspended over lack of lifeboat
A self-service 24-hour kayak hire company has paused operations in a coastal town currently without its lifeboat service at the request of a recently opened a unit in Sheringham, Norfolk. The Royal National Lifeboat Institution (RNLI) suspended rescues in the area in January after the cliff behind its station became unstable. North Norfolk District Council (NNDC) said it was reassessing the operator's health and safety documentation "in the light of recent changes to the RNLI provision in the area". Kayakomat said it was working with the council "to ensure that all of their additional needs are met" with safety "as the top priority". "We have been made aware of some local safety concerns regarding the location of Kayakomat at Sheringham," the council spokesperson said."In light of recent changes to the RNLI provision in the area, we are in the process of reassessing the operator's health and safety documentation."The Swedish company, which has branches across Europe, received consent from NNDC to set up business in Sheringham last year. Customers rent the kayaks online and are sent a booking code, said Kayakomat key account manager Malin Arnesson She said: "You go to our station, you enter our code and you take out your equipment."This includes a life jacket, which is mandatory to wear, and customers must also paddle with others and stay close to the shore, she added. Brendon Prince from Above Water, a charity that promotes the safe use of inland and coast waterways, said kayaking was a difficult skill and a combination of strong currents and winds and rapidly changing weather conditions could push inexperienced people out to sea far more rapidly then they expected."There is very little responsibility either from the kayak provider or [the customer] to understand that conditions can change when you're out on the water and they can be incredibly dangerous if [the kayaker] gets into danger," he said. Ms Arnesson said "all customers must read and accept our safety guidelines before they can make their reservation".An RNLI spokesperson said: "While all search and rescue activity at Sheringham RNLI was temporarily suspended in January... other RNLI support locally remains in place and has even been enhanced in light of that."Wells RNLI and regional staff are supporting the Sheringham lifeboat team. The spokesperson urged all kayakers to wear a lifejacket, check weather conditions before departure and carry a device to call for help if needed. Follow Norfolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
Yahoo
03-04-2025
- General
- Yahoo
‘It's like complaining about Big Ben in London': The war between fishermen and second home owners in Norfolk
'It's lunacy!' says David Will over tea and biscuits at The Lifeboat Tavern. 'North Norfolk District Council (NNDC) has been backing tourism over our fishing heritage for years now.' But the 79-year-old – whose ancestors fished off the East Anglian coast for generations – refuses to back down in his fight to ensure the last remaining fishermen in the sleepy coastal village of Sea Palling maintain their rights to keep four boats on a field 100m from the beach. As we perch at a table in the lee of Sea Palling's high dunes, Will, who himself is a property consultant, explains how enforcement officers from NNDC arrived at the field and turfed fisherman off the spot where they'd been storing their boats since the 1980s 'They were pretty aggressive', he recalls, 'waving their enforcement notice at the boys, telling them to move their gear immediately.' Even though the field was owned by a local man, Fred Page, who allowed the fishing community to use it free of charge, it has become the battleground for a dispute pitting the owners of three holiday cottages against the fishing community. The second home owners, located between the unofficial 'boatyard' and the beach, fear the site has become 'increasingly industrialised' and submitted a photograph showing three plastic kayaks, some large plastic crates and two small chalk boards advertising seal watching and angling. In a document submitted to the council, one objector said: 'The landowner appears to want free reign to do anything he wishes – not necessarily related to historical small-scale local fishing.' The fishermen, meanwhile, claim that if they lose the right to use the site, the industry in the village wouldn't survive. Reading reports in the local press, I wondered what horrors might greet me when I saw the field; perhaps it was littered with unsightly fishing debris? Were there stinking mounds of rotting fish? Maybe the fishermen were loud, blasting out music as well as keeping engines running at all hours? Maybe long queues of boats trapped holidaymakers in their homes for hours every high tide? But when Val Bird – a chair of the Sea Palling and Waxham Parish Council, who argues it would be a 'travesty if the boatyard disappears' – leads me up The Marrams, the short, quiet, one-lane road to the field, she gestures towards a peaceful scene. To the right of the gate is a tidy stack of crab pots – their rope mellowed with age and blending with the rural scenery. There are two tractors, two small crabbing boats and two larger vessels which brothers Jason and Richard 'Dicky' Clarke use to catch bass and herring up to 10 miles off the coast. 'They're both local boys,' says Will. 'Went to school with my son. They both learnt to fish from their dad, who's not well now but still helps with the boats.' In the middle of the small field (which is partially blocked from holiday cottage view by a hedge) stands a suntanned Dicky Clarke, pulling herrings from the net at the back of his boat (by hand) and tossing them into plastic tubs beside him. It's a sunny day, and when he picks up pace, fish scales flutter and sparkle through the blue like iridescent confetti. 'It's been a good few years fishing,' he smiles, nodding down at his haul. 'I've been out on that water since I was five years old and making my own living there for the past 38 years,' he says. So he and his brother were 'blindsided' by attempts to evict them from 'Fred's Field'. He says 'years ago', the council sent him a letter confirming his right to store boats on the site because of an 18th-century covenant, the White Herring Fisheries Act 1771, giving fishermen the right to store their gear on land 200m from the high-water mark. (A friend of mine, who lives a few miles down the coast in Winterton, has always understood that local fishermen have the right to dry their nets on the garden of her terraced house, which backs onto the dunes.) Will – who settles himself into a deck chair as Clarke rummages in his small wooded shed for a knife to fillet us all some herring for our tea – laments the speed with which two other fishermen (who came down from Caister) vacated Fred's Field 'because they were scared off by enforcement letters that weren't even correctly worded'. Will's legal training allowed him to see several errors in protocol, which allowed him to push back: 'I went online and copied and pasted the relevant law to the assistant head of planning at NNDC. Never heard back from him, though.' He tuts. The yard's owner subsequently applied to NNDC for a certificate of lawfulness to ensure the land had the correct permissions, but the council rejected the application and ruled the yard was not operating lawfully. Will is angry about the way the local government has increasingly prioritised tourism over traditional local trades over the past 50 years. As a boy growing up in Haisborough, he remembers his mother sending him down to meet the fishing boats as they came in to buy '12 and one' herrings. 'Down in Haisborough, the boats had to come in stern first because of the choppy waves. But we've lost two boat ramps down there now, and boats can no longer get to the sea. The ramp at Hemsby has also gone. I've watched them dismantle the fishing industry in favour of tourism, pushing aside families who have lived here for generations to leave our coast out for rent.' North Norfolk has the second highest proportion of second homes in England (after the City of London) and one of the highest in terms of total numbers. But there is no reason that holiday makers and the fishing community can't co-exist. In fact, the boats can be part of the attraction. It's Clarke's crab that visitors buy (£14.99 for a medium dressed crab with chips, salad and marie rose sauce) at the local chippy, The Mermaid's Catch. And it's his crab and bass that Matt Fernando – who runs The Lifeboat Tavern – is intending to serve once he gets the pub's kitchen running this summer. 'Eating local should be one of the great pleasures of travel,' he says. 'Norfolk has great agriculture and wonderful fresh seafood. Why shouldn't we be celebrating that?' Clarke tells me that people using the campsite behind Fred's Field often come over to ask about his day's catch. Children get the opportunity to see where their food comes from and Dicky and Jason often sell fish straight from the nets for campers to barbecue. 'Can't get any fresher than that!' he laughs. On Facebook's Visitors Guide to Sea Palling page, tourists write that the sight of boats rumbling past their lounge windows is a holiday highlight for their families. Visitor Andrea Clover writes that she loves watching the boats towed out to the shoreline on her visits. Mark Taylor says he also enjoys watching the boats put to sea while relaxing in the pub's beer garden. Laetitia Webb, who owns the holiday cottage Rocket House on Beach Road (the slipway site) says that the vast majority of rental owners back the fishermen. She says: 'I've not had one guest complaint in eight years even though you can hear tractors at 5am – guests are excited by the activity, not annoyed by it.' Webb is one of over 1,000 people to sign a petition in support of the fisherman that I see in the village post office and which has now been published online so that supporters of the Clarke brothers can back them from around the world. 'Given that Sea Palling has a population of only around 600 people, that's an impressive number of signatures,' says Bird. Clarke is 'really touched, really happy and relieved' by the waves of support – and minor local celebrity – he's found. He's wary of talking too much, though, and points up wearily at the CCTV camera that a complaining holiday cottage owner has installed to watch over the field. The gossip around the village is that these 'incomers' tried to buy Fred's Field and the eviction of the fishermen is part of their campaign to 'extend their empire'. 'But,' says Fernando, 'you can't just come out to a village like this and start hitting the locals over the head with a roll of notes and expect them to do what you want. This is a tight-knit community and we won't be pushed around.' When The Telegraph contacted NNDC for comment, a spokesman initially couldn't find any evidence of the enforcement notice. But after Will provided email evidence, they acknowledged one had been issued but argued that 'the site at Sea Palling has evolved significantly in recent years'. They said that 'our planning team issued an enforcement warning notice to the owners last year asking that a planning application be submitted that would regularise the planning status of the site' to allow the storage of nine boats, equipment, tractors and the erection of a shed of hard standing. It's the council's view that Page and Will made a mistake in applying for a certificate of lawfulness instead this January. To gain such a certificate, they'd have to prove that site use hadn't changed over the previous decade. The council rejected that application this March, believing that activity on the site had escalated or 'changed materially'. Will tells me the authorities have assured him that they will not issue another enforcement notice. He argues that 'if the local planning authority continue their opposition, it will be the end of the inshore fishing industry. The boats are better out on the waves, not just on tourists' postcards.' But negotiations to determine how much of the land is allowed to be used for fishing gear are ongoing between the landowner, the fishermen and NNDC, whose spokesman tells me that their planning team is 'happy to discuss practical next steps', which would include appealing their rejected application or submitting a fresh planning application. As I walk back through Sea Palling with my bag of herring, I pop back into the post office where staff roll their eyes at the whole 'ree-dic-u-lous' debacle. 'Coming to the seaside and complaining about fishing boats is like us going into London and complaining about the chimes of Big Ben!' Broaden your horizons with award-winning British journalism. Try The Telegraph free for 1 month with unlimited access to our award-winning website, exclusive app, money-saving offers and more.
Telegraph
03-04-2025
- General
- Telegraph
‘It's like complaining about Big Ben in London': The war between fishermen and second home owners in Norfolk
'It's lunacy!' says David Will over tea and biscuits at The Lifeboat Tavern. 'North Norfolk District Council (NNDC) has been backing tourism over our fishing heritage for years now.' But the 79-year-old – whose ancestors fished off the East Anglian coast for generations – refuses to back down in his fight to ensure the last remaining fishermen in the sleepy coastal village of Sea Palling maintain their rights to keep four boats on a field 100m from the beach. As we perch at a table in the lee of Sea Palling's high dunes, Will, who himself is a property consultant, explains how enforcement officers from NNDC arrived at the field and turfed fisherman off the spot where they'd been storing their boats since the 1980s 'They were pretty aggressive', he recalls, 'waving their enforcement notice at the boys, telling them to move their gear immediately.' Even though the field was owned by a local man, Fred Page, who allowed the fishing community to use it free of charge, it has become the battleground for a dispute pitting the owners of three holiday cottages against the fishing community. The second home owners, located between the unofficial 'boatyard' and the beach, fear the site has become 'increasingly industrialised' and submitted a photograph showing three plastic kayaks, some large plastic crates and two small chalk boards advertising seal watching and angling. In a document submitted to the council, one objector said: 'The landowner appears to want free reign to do anything he wishes – not necessarily related to historical small-scale local fishing.' The fishermen, meanwhile, claim that if they lose the right to use the site, the industry in the village wouldn't survive. Reading reports in the local press, I wondered what horrors might greet me when I saw the field; perhaps it was littered with unsightly fishing debris? Were there stinking mounds of rotting fish? Maybe the fishermen were loud, blasting out music as well as keeping engines running at all hours? Maybe long queues of boats trapped holidaymakers in their homes for hours every high tide? But when Val Bird – a chair of the Sea Palling and Waxham Parish Council, who argues it would be a 'travesty if the boatyard disappears' – leads me up The Marrams, the short, quiet, one-lane road to the field, she gestures towards a peaceful scene. To the right of the gate is a tidy stack of crab pots – their rope mellowed with age and blending with the rural scenery. There are two tractors, two small crabbing boats and two larger vessels which brothers Jason and Richard 'Dicky' Clarke use to catch bass and herring up to 10 miles off the coast. 'They're both local boys,' says Will. 'Went to school with my son. They both learnt to fish from their dad, who's not well now but still helps with the boats.' In the middle of the small field (which is partially blocked from holiday cottage view by a hedge) stands a suntanned Dicky Clarke, pulling herrings from the net at the back of his boat (by hand) and tossing them into plastic tubs beside him. It's a sunny day, and when he picks up pace, fish scales flutter and sparkle through the blue like iridescent confetti. 'It's been a good few years fishing,' he smiles, nodding down at his haul. 'I've been out on that water since I was five years old and making my own living there for the past 38 years,' he says. So he and his brother were 'blindsided' by attempts to evict them from 'Fred's Field'. He says 'years ago', the council sent him a letter confirming his right to store boats on the site because of an 18th-century covenant, the White Herring Fisheries Act 1771, giving fishermen the right to store their gear on land 200m from the high-water mark. (A friend of mine, who lives a few miles down the coast in Winterton, has always understood that local fishermen have the right to dry their nets on the garden of her terraced house, which backs onto the dunes.) Will – who settles himself into a deck chair as Clarke rummages in his small wooded shed for a knife to fillet us all some herring for our tea – laments the speed with which two other fishermen (who came down from Caister) vacated Fred's Field 'because they were scared off by enforcement letters that weren't even correctly worded'. Will's legal training allowed him to see several errors in protocol, which allowed him to push back: 'I went online and copied and pasted the relevant law to the assistant head of planning at NNDC. Never heard back from him, though.' He tuts. The yard's owner subsequently applied to NNDC for a certificate of lawfulness to ensure the land had the correct permissions, but the council rejected the application and ruled the yard was not operating lawfully. Will is angry about the way the local government has increasingly prioritised tourism over traditional local trades over the past 50 years. As a boy growing up in Haisborough, he remembers his mother sending him down to meet the fishing boats as they came in to buy '12 and one' herrings. 'Down in Haisborough, the boats had to come in stern first because of the choppy waves. But we've lost two boat ramps down there now, and boats can no longer get to the sea. The ramp at Hemsby has also gone. I've watched them dismantle the fishing industry in favour of tourism, pushing aside families who have lived here for generations to leave our coast out for rent.' North Norfolk has the second highest proportion of second homes in England (after the City of London) and one of the highest in terms of total numbers. But there is no reason that holiday makers and the fishing community can't co-exist. In fact, the boats can be part of the attraction. It's Clarke's crab that visitors buy (£14.99 for a medium dressed crab with chips, salad and marie rose sauce) at the local chippy, The Mermaid's Catch. And it's his crab and bass that Matt Fernando – who runs The Lifeboat Tavern – is intending to serve once he gets the pub's kitchen running this summer. 'Eating local should be one of the great pleasures of travel,' he says. 'Norfolk has great agriculture and wonderful fresh seafood. Why shouldn't we be celebrating that?' Clarke tells me that people using the campsite behind Fred's Field often come over to ask about his day's catch. Children get the opportunity to see where their food comes from and Dicky and Jason often sell fish straight from the nets for campers to barbecue. 'Can't get any fresher than that!' he laughs. On Facebook's Visitors Guide to Sea Palling page, tourists write that the sight of boats rumbling past their lounge windows is a holiday highlight for their families. Visitor Andrea Clover writes that she loves watching the boats towed out to the shoreline on her visits. Mark Taylor says he also enjoys watching the boats put to sea while relaxing in the pub's beer garden. Laetitia Webb, who owns the holiday cottage Rocket House on Beach Road (the slipway site) says that the vast majority of rental owners back the fishermen. She says: 'I've not had one guest complaint in eight years even though you can hear tractors at 5am – guests are excited by the activity, not annoyed by it.' Webb is one of over 1,000 people to sign a petition in support of the fisherman that I see in the village post office and which has now been published online so that supporters of the Clarke brothers can back them from around the world. 'Given that Sea Palling has a population of only around 600 people, that's an impressive number of signatures,' says Bird. Clarke is 'really touched, really happy and relieved' by the waves of support – and minor local celebrity – he's found. He's wary of talking too much, though, and points up wearily at the CCTV camera that a complaining holiday cottage owner has installed to watch over the field. The gossip around the village is that these 'incomers' tried to buy Fred's Field and the eviction of the fishermen is part of their campaign to 'extend their empire'. 'But,' says Fernando, 'you can't just come out to a village like this and start hitting the locals over the head with a roll of notes and expect them to do what you want. This is a tight-knit community and we won't be pushed around.' When The Telegraph contacted NNDC for comment, a spokesman initially couldn't find any evidence of the enforcement notice. But after Will provided email evidence, they acknowledged one had been issued but argued that 'the site at Sea Palling has evolved significantly in recent years'. They said that 'our planning team issued an enforcement warning notice to the owners last year asking that a planning application be submitted that would regularise the planning status of the site' to allow the storage of nine boats, equipment, tractors and the erection of a shed of hard standing. It's the council's view that Page and Will made a mistake in applying for a certificate of lawfulness instead this January. To gain such a certificate, they'd have to prove that site use hadn't changed over the previous decade. The council rejected that application this March, believing that activity on the site had escalated or 'changed materially'. Will tells me the authorities have assured him that they will not issue another enforcement notice. He argues that 'if the local planning authority continue their opposition, it will be the end of the inshore fishing industry. The boats are better out on the waves, not just on tourists' postcards.' But negotiations to determine how much of the land is allowed to be used for fishing gear are ongoing between the landowner, the fishermen and NNDC, whose spokesman tells me that their planning team is 'happy to discuss practical next steps', which would include appealing their rejected application or submitting a fresh planning application. As I walk back through Sea Palling with my bag of herring, I pop back into the post office where staff roll their eyes at the whole 'ree-dic-u-lous' debacle. 'Coming to the seaside and complaining about fishing boats is like us going into London and complaining about the chimes of Big Ben!'
BBC News
28-03-2025
- Entertainment
- BBC News
Omaze Norfolk house winner overjoyed despite planning issue
A woman said she felt "pure joy" on finding out she had won a £6m house in a charity raffle, allowing her and her family to move out of her in-laws' Curtis-Cresswell from South Wales won the luxury Norfolk property, which is at the centre of a planning which ran the competition in partnership with Comic Relief, previously said it was working with North Norfolk District Council (NNDC) regarding recommendations about the 41-year-old said: "I was absolutely flabbergasted. My sister in-law burst out crying; it was a mixture of shock and pure joy." Ms Curtis-Cresswell, her husband and daughter, had been searching for a rental property while living at her in-laws' three-bedroom house."In a matter of seconds our lives changed forever and we became multi-millionaires," she said."My mother-in-law feels like she's won the jackpot as we can now move out!"It's just crazy. One week we're worrying about our old car breaking down, the next thing we've got a £6m house."The former Miss Wales finalist plans to sell the property in Blakeney and buy a house in Wales."We'll be having a big party in Norfolk before we sell up. We can't wait to invite all our friends and family," she council began investigating the seaside home after an anonymous member of the public raised concerns, saying it had not been built to the approved is understood that the council had given Omaze a deadline of Wednesday to respond to a list of requirements, and the council confirmed it had received a response.A spokesperson for the council said: "No formal action will be taken whilst the matter is being actively progressed." Omaze previously said: "Omaze reiterates that it guarantees no house winner would ever have to incur any costs whatsoever to remedy any historical planning issue."It said the prize draw had raised £4m for Comic Relief. Follow Norfolk news on BBC Sounds, Facebook, Instagram and X.
