New hitch for spa water man

Having received planning permission for his project at Paygate Farm, Palehouse Common, after taking his case to appeal Mr David Pursglove is now on course to fight another appeal, this time over his abstraction licence.

He claims his well is capable of producing 22,000 litres of water a week but he was advised by the Environment Agency that he would not be allowed to abstract that amount.

On their advice he dropped the figure to 2,400 litres a day but then ended up with a licence allowing him to abstract only 11,900 litres a week, or 1,700 a day.

He also claims that the agency delayed issuing his licence until the very last moment and stipulated the abstraction had to start within two years or the licence would fall. 'That is no good to me when the environmental health people have told me I have to carry out tests on the water for a minimum of two years before I can sell it,' said Mr Pursglove.

In addition, said Mr Pursglove, the letter he received with his licence gave him an incorrect address to use if he wanted to appeal and told him that he had only one month in which to appeal though he had since been told that he had six months.

Mrs Wendy Rogers, abstraction licensing officer for the Environment Agency said the agency was required to consider the reasonableness of anybody's application to abstract water.

Unreasonable

She said the agency had no problem with the hourly or daily amount Mr Pursglove wanted to abstract but said it was unreasonable to give him a licence to abstract 365 days a year.

'Nobody is going to expect a very tiny cottage industry to abstract 365 days a year and it would be unreasonable for the agency to grant a licence on those terms,' said Mrs Rogers. The licence given allowed for abstraction 260 days a year.

She went on to say that Mr Pursglove's well had a very, very poor yield. It took about 25 minutes for the well to fill up and about one and a half minutes to be pumped out.

The condition that abstraction commenced within two years was standard because licences were granted taking into account the amount of water available for abstraction and if licences were unused for many years it could restrict the number of licences granted in the future.

Mrs Rogers said that a standard letter was sent to Mr Pursglove about his appeal rights. She apologised if the address for appeals had changed.

Mrs Rogers also said that the agency had three months in which to determine applications for licences. In Mr Pursglove's case his application was received on October 28 and the licence issued on January 14 well within the time period which expired on January 28.