Land owner starts shifting dumped chalk after court threat

A land owner has started moving chalk from a car park after Brighton and Hove City Council threatened to take legal action for breach of an enforcement notice.

Councillors were previously told that tons of chalk had been dumped in the Brighton Footgolf car park, at the Benfield Valley Golf Course, by a rogue builder.

The chalk ended up there in what the former Conservative councillor Dawn Barnett, who represented Hangleton and Knoll until last week, described as a “business deal gone wrong”.

The rogue builder had the leaseholder’s permission to use the site to store the chalk temporarily but disappeared after dumping it and has never returned to move it.

The council served the leaseholder, Benfield Investments Limited, with an enforcement notice more than two years ago requiring the chalk to be removed. The company appealed against the notice.

But in the same year, the company also applied for planning permission to use some of the chalk to build bunds around the car park boundary, off Hangleton Lane, in Hove.

Despite a number of objections, the council’s Planning Committee voted in favour of the proposal in August 2021.

Shortly afterwards, Benfield Valley Investments director Lawrence Boon, 59, was notified by the Planning Inspectorate that the company had lost its appeal against the enforcement notice.

Planning inspector Paul Hocking said that the appeal had been dismissed because of the effect on the grade II listed Benfield Barn and associated conservation area and the wider site of nature conservation importance.

The council said: “Golf course leaseholders have confirmed to us in writing that they will be removing the pile of chalk spoil from the site instead of using it to create the bund that they have previously gained planning permission for.”