A CAUTIONARY TALE
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• Any haulier thinking he might expand his existing site as an alternative to moving should consider John Burgess's tale. He runs building material specialist haulier CJ Burgess & Sons in East Sussex, but a few years ago he wondered whether there was any point in carrying on.
"I applied to extend my 0-licence by half a dozen trucks and immediately came up against a local resident who was hell-bent on stopping me," he says. "He had bought his house near to our yard two or three years earlier, knowing we were there, but I think he would have done anything to shut us down."
Following the objection, a public inquiry was called. Burgess was forced to hire a solicitor to represent him—his objector had engaged the services of a barrister who successfully argued that he should not be allowed to base more vehicles on the site. After having his appeal turned down at a second inquiry, Burgess faced being restricted to operating between 07:00-18:00hrs although this never actually happened after his MP intervened on his behalf.
"The whole thing cost me around £45,000 and a lot of lost sleep—and the man who objected sold up and moved out of the area recently," he says. "What it does mean is that I will never be able to increase the size of my base here—I've now got two other operating centres elsewhere and base the extra vehicles there."