The lorry park was created without planning permission and handed an Enforcement Notice from the council
An inspector has ruled a lorry park must be restored to its original condition after being created without permission. The land lies north west of Thrapston Road just outside of Brington and was handed an enforcement notice last year demanding the lorries and vehicles be removed.
Huntingdonshire District Council gave the occupiers six months from September 2025 to restore the land to its condition before the “unauthorised storage use took place”.
Marshall Ndhlovu, of Elmarsh Logistics Ltd, appealed the Enforcement Notice – arguing the site “provides essential operational space” for the small-scale logistics business, “supporting local employment and efficient movement of goods”.
He said “most of the site is fenced off from public view”, and was tarred in the 1990s and hasn’t been used as agricultural land “for over 30 years”.
Mr Ndholvu said it was “factually impossible and unreasonable” to require them to restore the land to agricultural use “where the land has been hardstanding for decades”. He also requested 12 to 18 months to move the fleet instead of six, “due to contractual obligations and site alternatives”.
He said the company had been searching for alternative land since the notice, but it “has proved difficult to secure an alternative arrangement given the operational pressures of vacating the land”. The council said the storage use “fails to recognise the intrinsic character and beauty of the countryside” and there’s not enough evidence to justify it “functions well and adds to the overall quality of the area”.
Though accepting there “may have been some lorries kept on this land” while the A14 dual carriageway was built, planning permission was never granted for a change of use from agricultural land. They said there was enough time given, as the landowners “have known since 2018 that this land required planning permission to be used for the current purposes”.
An application was refused in 2021 to use the land for parking and no appeal was launched.
M Savage, from the Planning Inspectorate, visited on February 4 and saw a “significant number of different vehicles” including HGVs, vans and cars and “other items, such as tyres and machinery”.
They agreed with the council that the land was used for ‘storage’ not ‘parking’ as vehicles would have to be moved “to enable other vehicles to leave the site”.
A nearby resident wrote to support the appeal, claiming that the site has been “hard-surfaced since the 1990s” and was “used as a dumping site for rubbish, attracting vermin” until the current owner took over.
The inspector accepted there was evidence it was “historically used for the storage of vehicles and equipment” while the dual carriageway was constructed, but said it is “unlikely it would be possible to resume using it in this way, given the construction of that part of the A14 has long since been carried out”.
They also said six months was a “reasonable period of time” and the appeal was dismissed.







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