Customers help to reverse decision
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• by David Cralk An East Sussex haulier says support from his customers and his local MP helped him win a conflict with a "neighbour from hell" which nearly caused him to close down his 52-yearold business.
Over two years John Burgess of CJ Burgess spent more than £40,000 fighting complaints against his bagging plant from a neighbouring resident.
"This chap objected to the noise of vehicles going in and out in both the morning and the evening," says Burgess. "He built a tower in his yard in order to spy at us and he kept a leg book for 18 months detailing every signal movement and noise in and out of the plant, and even hired a barrister to fight his case."
Burgess says when the complainant moved in five years ago he was fully aware of the proximity of the CJ Burgess plant. Nonetheless last November Burgess had to appear at a public inquiry before South Eastern Traffic Commissioner Michael Turner to defend his plant's operations. We had never been to a public inquiry before," he says. "But we were told that we had to have imposed on us 07.00hrs to 19.00hrs time restrictions. This would have killed off our operation."
Burgess says he was deeply disappointed that Turner had deckled against his company. 1 would have expected him to defend an established haulier such as us," he says.
Burgess says he came close to selling his trucks and giving up. But with the help of solicitors and letters of support from his customers and his local MP, he managed to reverse Turner's decision.