July 2014

HCWG welcomed the decision of Argyll and Bute Council to refuse retrospective planning permission on 18 July 2014 for a 1.8 metre high wooden fence on to Cumberland Avenue. The Council’s refusal notice described the fence as “an alien and formal boundary treatment which undermines the previously attractive context of the street merging with the open space (and which) also undermines the Council’s objectives to seek to restore the amenity value of the site.”

HCWG had consistently sought the removal of this fence ever since it was erected by Margery Osborne and Thomas Paterson without any permission in October 2012. Some 17 months later, the owners were finally persuaded to apply for retrospective planning permission by the threat of Council enforcement action. Within days of the planning refusal in July 2014, the landowners reduced the height of the fence to 1 metre to comply with permitted development rights. This re-opens the Cumberland Avenue site to public view from the street and makes it even more important to remove the remnants of logs and debris from the 2011 felling.

For more information, see the report at:
Lochside Press: Fence at Cumberland Avenue should go, say planners