A man who spent a decade in dispute with council planners over a riverside idyll hit back at suggestions he had shown a ‘remarkable sense of entitlement’.
Simon Courtney-Worthy, 62, was fined £13,000 at Oxford Magistrates’ Court in July after he admitted breaching two enforcement notices by failing to heed a council order that he take down decking and sheds and remove a vessel ‘Boaty McFloaty’ from land by the River Thames near Long Wittenham.
He appealed both his sentence to the crown court, with the case heard on Friday before a judge and two magistrates.
South Oxfordshire District Council’s barrister Rowan Clapp charted the dispute between planning officers and Courtney-Worthy, which dated back to 2012.
He accused appellant of showing a ‘remarkable sense of entitlement and, indeed, an apparent belief Mr Courtney-Worthy was a special case [who] can ignore the enforcement efforts of the local authority’. He had shown ‘no sense of contrition whatsoever’, it was alleged.
In one note to the council, summarised by the lawyer, he was said to have ‘found it surprising the local authority have nothing better to do than enforce against him’. He described their questions as ‘obtuse’.
The shed, since taken down, was in an area of high flood risk, and had a negative effect on the ‘river environment and conservation area that others enjoy’.
Representing himself, Courtney-Worthy hit back at the criticism. The land had been given to him by ‘deed of gift’ in 1996, although he grew up swimming at the site, and he had moored boats since coming into possession of the land. There had been a boat shed on the land for ’55 years’ and previous owners had moored boats there, he said.
He said he had done ‘no such thing’ as change the use of the land, but had started ‘staying on board my boat on my piece of land’ to self-isolate during the pandemic.
The council had ‘supposedly served paperwork’ that ‘never finds me’. “Every time the council issue yet another set of rules or whatever, I’m supposed to abide by; I did it once, I did what they asked me to do then something else comes [up].”
Courtney-Worthy challenged suggestions that he had detracted from the character of the area, saying he had done nothing by make it a ‘whole lot better’.
And he hit out at the personal criticism levelled against him. “He doesn’t know me, he knows nothing about me,” he said of the council’s barrister. “Yes, I did say to the local authority that I found their next set of questions obtuse, because I’d answered all their questions previously.”
He added: “I’ve been there since 1996. I’m not in the habit of breaking laws and rules and regulations.”
Judge Michael Gledhill KC, sitting alongside two magistrates, dismissed the appeal.
“This appellant has, clearly, a long-standing grievance with the planning department of this council concerning his use…of his own land and the use of the river adjacent to it,” he said.
“We are not going to go into the rights and wrongs of that dispute. All we have to consider in this appeal against sentence is whether or not there are any grounds for reducing the level of fines on the basis they were wrong in law, principle or manifestly excessive.”
Courtney-Worthy was ordered to pay the council’s costs.
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This story was written by Tom Seaward. He joined the team in 2021 as Oxfordshire's court and crime reporter.
To get in touch with him email: Tom.Seaward@newsquest.co.uk
Follow him on Twitter: @t_seaward
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