Sir – On a case which started in 1997, your report (Brothers face jail after long legal row over golf course, August 25) cannot do much more than draw this to the public’s attention, but more detail is available on the Waterstock Golf Club’s website under ‘Planning and Development News’. Photographs there show the expert restoration of the site. Ten appearances in the High Court, one criminal prosecution and three public inquiries costing the Wyatts £1.5m probably makes this the most contested case since the Planning Act of 1947. The case has not settled, and the Wyatts are again scheduled to appear in the High Court, simply because the county council obdurately fails to acknowledge that the enforcement requirements cannot be complied with. The website explains that the plan being relied on by OCC to show that all waste has been removed is fundamentally inaccurate and any attempt to realise its contours would destroy the landscape. As apparently sane people who have had absolutely nothing to gain by continuing with the litigation, the Wyatts would have carried out any work on the site to avoid being found to be in contempt of court. Whether or not the Wyatts are imprisoned or required to pay a fine they could no longer afford, OCC will still be left with the problem that waste cannot be found on the site and even if compliance with the current plan is technically possible, such an operation would have no relevance to waste removal and would be undesirable in landscape terms. Without any planning merit whatsoever, the council’s leadership (and all other county councillors) should question why it is spending more on three days in the High Court and ripping up the landscape than on financing all the council’s youth centres for at least a year?
Daniel Scharf, Drayton
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