Mooring on own land, if sssi land

[TCP]

Hi there, I have recently bought some sssi land part of dungeness protected nationally and internationally it has river frontage and thought I could put a narrow boat or more on the river, the land has fishing and riparian  rights. I have applied for “planning advice” and the planning officer said that I won’t be able to have a mooring there because of the land being sssi and people going to the boat and from the boat will have some impact on the fauna of the land ( at the moment people are walking dogs there and sheep are grazing the land). He also said that the land is agricultural and crops can be planted there (now this will definitely have an impact on the land and doesn’t make sense) I wanted to keep the land exactly as is, to see the sheep grazing, rabits wondering about, birds singing and so on but also have some boats on the water where people could sleep weekends and enjoy all that nature has to offer.

Any of you out there knows how this can be tackled, does reparian rights mean you have the right to place a boat on water?

Planning officer said that changing use of land could help but didn’t say how it will help. Very grey area, but notthing logical.

This feels like having a piece of art in British museum, its mine but cannot touch it.

 

 

[Tumshie]

9 minutes ago, TCP said:

I have applied for “planning advice”

Hello TCP, and welcome to the forum.

 

When you asked for this planning advice you did you talk to?

Edited December 8, 2018 by Tumshie

[Athy]

Which navigable river is that? I know there's a Dungeness River but that's some distance away.

[LadyG]

Hi there,

welcome to the site, just to clarify, this is more of a commercial venture than "end of garden mooring" for your own use.

Are there narrowboats on the water, in the area, just askin'?

Edited December 8, 2018 by LadyG

[TCP]

Hi Tumshie, yes as soon as he sent the government policies stoping me to do anything on the land I called the planning officer and spoke to him, he just said that is his opinion and that I can apply for planning but will more than likely get a refusal 

[TCP]

River Brede I have seen boats there but haven’t seen narrow boats, the river is not part of any agency and falls under the local council apparently .

[Tumshie]

8 minutes ago, TCP said:

Hi Tumshie, yes as soon as he sent the government policies stoping me to do anything on the land I called the planning officer and spoke to him, he just said that is his opinion and that I can apply for planning but will more than likely get a refusal 

The planning office isn't your first port of call in this matter. Natural England is, and if you bought ground that was already sited as a SSSI then you should have the info that you need to contact them. 

 

No two SSSI are the same I've seen some where people have been able to build houses on them and other where you can't so much as graze a cow. So get in touch with Natural England, they will put you in touch with your area rep, who can then offer you advice and an assessment. If you then have to apply for planing permission that department will take there lead from Natural England any way.

 

Good Luck

Tumsh. 

Edited December 8, 2018 by Tumshie

[TCP]

1 minute ago, Tumshie said:

The planning office isn't your first port of call in this matter. Natural England is, And if you bought round that was already sited as a SSSI then you should have the info that you need to contact them. 

 

No two SSSI are the same I've seen some where people that been able to build houses on them and other where you can't so much as graze a cow. So get in touch with Natural England, they will put you in touch with your area rep, Who can then offer you advice and an assessment. If you then have to apply for planing permission that department will take there lead from Natural England any way.

 

Good Luck

Tumsh. 

Thanks a lot will get in touch with natural England again, as they were the ones that advised me to get in touch with the local council planning department.

[Tumshie]

Just now, TCP said:

Thanks a lot will get in touch with natural England again, as they were the ones that advised me to get in touch with the local council planning department.

Do you have a specific contact at NE? Because if you don't ask if you can get an appointment for an assessment, you can get a free assessment and at the same time tell the person doing the visit about your plan for the mooring in as much detail as you can and ask their advice. 

 

It may be that the PD has to give you the worst case scenario until you actually apply, and when you do apply proper expect to go round and round, cos it will take 3x as long as it would other wise. 

 

Never settle for generic advice alway ask for the specific people who are dealing with your area and your case. They are always understaffed and you will need to keep reminding them that you are there, nicely obviously. 

 

With out knowing your case specifically I can't really offer much more that wouldn't be guess work I'm afraid, but you'll get there you just have to keep picking away it. 

[TCP]

2 minutes ago, Tumshie said:

Do you have a specific contact at NE? Because if you don't ask if you can get an appointment for an assessment, you can get a free assessment and at the same time tell the person doing the visit about your plan for the mooring in as much detail as you can and ask their advice. 

 

It may be that the PD has to give you the worst case scenario until you actually apply, and when you do apply proper expect to go round and round, cos it will take 3x as long as it would other wise. 

 

Never settle for generic advice alway ask for the specific people who are dealing with your area and your case. They are always understaffed and you will need to keep reminding them that you are there, nicely obviously. 

 

With out knowing your case specifically I can't really offer much more that wouldn't be guess work I'm afraid, but you'll get there you just have to keep picking away it. 

I was looking for NE advisor details in my emails will get in contact again with more details. Thanks again

[Mike on the Wey]

22 minutes ago, TCP said:

River Brede I have seen boats there but haven’t seen narrow boats, the river is not part of any agency and falls under the local council apparently .

The Brede rises south of Netherfield and flows into the Rother at Rye. Both are quite a way from Dungeness. 

 

41 minutes ago, TCP said:

I have recently bought some sssi land part of dungeness

So I don't really understand this.

[Tumshie]

Just now, TCP said:

I was looking for NE advisor details in my emails will get in contact again with more details. Thanks again

If there are sheep grazing are they your sheep? Or is this ground classed as agricultural? Because if so you will have a government area rep for the farming side of things, you can always ask them about things too as it may be covered in one of the agricultural grant schemes. And they also all know each other too. 

[TCP]

2 minutes ago, Mike on the Wey said:

The Brede rises south of Netherfield and flows into the Rother at Rye. Both are quite a way from Dungeness. 

 

So I don't really understand this.

Apparently Dungeness is over 4000ha of land

[alias]

9 minutes ago, Mike on the Wey said:

The Brede rises south of Netherfield and flows into the Rother at Rye. Both are quite a way from Dungeness. 

 

So I don't really understand this.

Well there is a Dungeness, Romney Marsh and Rye Bay SSSI.  Details (including an NE contact) here: https://designatedsites.naturalengland.org.uk/SiteDetail.aspx?SiteCode=s2000533

[TCP]

3 minutes ago, Tumshie said:

If there are sheep grazing are they your sheep? Or is this ground classed as agricultural? Because if so you will have a government area rep for the farming side of things, you can always ask them about things too as it may be covered in one of the agricultural grant schemes. And they also all know each other too. 

The sheep are not mine but a local farmer (it doesn’t bother me) natural England told me that a local farmer is grazing, the land is agricultural land, but looking at paperwork they sent you cannot dig or seed anything, planning officer said crops could be planted there, not too sure any more, definitely need to talk to natural England again.

3 minutes ago, peter n said:

Well there is a Dungeness, Romney Marsh and Rye Bay SSSI.  Details (including an NE contact) here: https://designatedsites.naturalengland.org.uk/SiteDetail.aspx?SiteCode=s2000533

I did talk to them just need to do it again.

[Tumshie]

1 minute ago, TCP said:

definitely need to talk to natural England again.

Yes definitely, and DEFRA because if as you say the land is agricultural you may find that you are responsible for paper work that you're not dealing with at the moment and that is very serious. Or if the guy with the sheep is including your land in his paper work and/or land census then it could cause big problems later. I don't want to worry you but you must make sure you know these things one way or the other as soon as possible. 

[David Mack]

Surely the first question should be whether mooring a boat requires planning permission at all. My understanding from elsewhere is that a non-residential mooring on the canals does not require PP, whereas a residential mooring constitutes change of use and therefore requires PP (although this is often ignored). For the OP the position may depend on the legal status of navigation on this particular river - whether mooring can be regarded as an incidental activity to legally authorised navigation.

[Tumshie]

3 minutes ago, David Mack said:

Surely the first question should be whether mooring a boat requires planning permission at all. My understanding from elsewhere is that a non-residential mooring on the canals does not require PP, whereas a residential mooring constitutes change of use and therefore requires PP (although this is often ignored). For the OP the position may depend on the legal status of navigation on this particular river - whether mooring can be regarded as an incidental activity to legally authorised navigation.

I must confess that in all the time I've been dealing with SSSIs I've never had to add a mooring into the equation, at least not one that didn't already exist.

 

I suspect whether or not you require PP depends on the type of mooring you do / have and how you access the mooring too, and I suppose what body of water it's on. 

 

If you didn't build any thing but just knocked in pins to tie up to maybe you wouldn't need PP, IDK. But worth thinking about. 

[Mike on the Wey]

1 hour ago, TCP said:

Apparently Dungeness is over 4000ha of land

Ah, so it's just about the sluice on the edge of Rye Harbour. I'm not being pedantic for the sake of it, but the location is better described as Rye. It is around 15 miles from Dungeness.

[Mike on the Wey]

This is, I believe, a photograph of the subject land. Thanks, Wiki.

[TCP]

16 minutes ago, Mike on the Wey said:

Ah, so it's just about the sluice on the edge of Rye Harbour. I'm not being pedantic for the sake of it, but the location is better described as Rye. It is around 15 miles from Dungeness.

That’s correct, land is left of the river further up

33 minutes ago, Tumshie said:

I must confess that in all the time I've been dealing with SSSIs I've never had to add a mooring into the equation, at least not one that didn't already exist.

 

I suspect whether or not you require PP depends on the type of mooring you do / have and how you access the mooring too, and I suppose what body of water it's on. 

 

If you didn't build any thing but just knocked in pins to tie up to maybe you wouldn't need PP, IDK. But worth thinking about. 

It would be good to put a boat there and see the outcome, as long as not used to sleep on, maybe will be fine, not sure how to approach it at this stage

[Tumshie]

30 minutes ago, TCP said:

It would be good to put a boat there and see the outcome, as long as not used to sleep on, maybe will be fine, not sure how to approach it at this stage

You must talk to the the appropriate authorities about getting the paper work sorted because while David makes some valid points you don't know how they will translate with your SSSI - a SSSI can stop you doing something that planning permission has no say over and a SSSI trumps every thing. Depending on why you have the SSSI you can get in a lot of trouble for violating it. 

Edited December 8, 2018 by Tumshie

[Cheese]

x

Edited December 8, 2018 by Cheese
Made a mistake!

[David Mack]

Looking at the map it would appear that the SSSI and the SPA end at the river bank (rather than within the river channel). So a boat moored in the river channel will not be moored in the SSSI/SPA, only adjacent to them. So if you bang in a couple of poles to moor against just inside the channel, the mooring itself should not be affected by the SSSI/SPA status. So that leaves the question of access to the mooring over the adjoining land. If you store nothing on the land, and access only on foot, it is difficult to see how that could be an issue.

[Tumshie]

2 minutes ago, David Mack said:

Looking at the map it would appear that the SSSI and the SPA end at the river bank (rather than within the river channel). So a boat moored in the river channel will not be moored in the SSSI/SPA, only adjacent to them. So if you bang in a couple of poles to moor against just inside the channel, the mooring itself should not be affected by the SSSI/SPA status. So that leaves the question of access to the mooring over the adjoining land. If you store nothing on the land, and access only on foot, it is difficult to see how that could be an issue.

I don't know what of that mapped area belongs to the OP so I don't feel comfortable being that specific about what may or may not be posable. 

 

 

But I cannot stress strongly enough that the relevant paper work from the relevant bodies is crucial if the OP want's to avoid prosecution - from a legal stand point I must now bow out of this conversation - I have offered all the help I can and I wish the OP good luck with their project.