PLANNING officers have refused permission for a residential caravan site in Ockendon.

An application was submitted to Thurrock Council following an investigation into nine mobile homes that had been installed behind the Chestnut Farm garden centre on South Road, South Ockendon at the junction with Buckles Lane.

The applicant sought to persuade the council the land had been used for mobile homes for more than ten years and therefore had the right to remain under a certificate of lawfulness.

It is down to the applicant to prove that the land had been used in this way and a Google Earth picture of two caravans on the site inn 1998 was submitted along an application form which stated that that the use began on October 1 2007 and had "since taken place without interruption".

However, planners were not convinced. They investigated in January and found that a breach of planning rules had occurred and a new building had been put up on the eastern corner of the site which was being occupied by approximately nine mobile homes.

Investigations established that the building and these homes had been brought on to the site in April 2020. During the investigations the number of mobile homes on the site increased to 12 and an enforcement notice was issued on October 16.

A planning officer's report said: "The submitted evidence does little to either clarify the applicant's position in regards the existing use applied for, storage or residential use, or to support their assertion that such use has taken place for an uninterrupted period of more than ten years prior to submission of this application.

"The aerial photograph dated 1998 does not clearly illustrate either storage or residential use of caravans. It is not clear that the central unit is indeed a caravan, and it could be portable office cabin or similar, and the sides of the unit are obscured by piles of rubber tyres."

"These photos do not demonstrate that the alleged use has continued for a continuous and unbroken period of at least ten years prior to the application.

"They only show a snapshot of the site as it was on two days over 20 years apart, with the site appearing different in each image, and therefore can be given very little weight towards the issuing of a certificate of lawfulness."