A FAMILY has failed in a second chance bid to keep a fence between their front garden and a busy road.

Monmouthshire Council had already ordered the 1.98m high fence put up to enhance security for their children and the family dog at their Chepstow home would have to come down.

But mum Sophie Daly launched an appeal to Planning and Environment Decisions Wales, PEDW, to keep the fence that was put up between February and April last year.

Ms Daly said she didn’t believe the council had properly considered the arguments she put forward to keep the fence at her home on St Lawrence Road, close to the junction of the busy A48 and the Heighbeech Roundabout.

She stated: “Without the fence and gates it would not be possible for my children to play outside or for my dog to be exercised securely within our own property.”

But her plea was dismissed by independent planning inspector G Hall who upheld the decision by Monmouthshire Council’s planning committee to refuse the application.

The timber fence had replaced a former boundary hedge which inspector Hall acknowledged “attracted significant littering” and said they’d been told “hazardous items including needles” had been found within it.

But despite saying “correspondence from medical and education professionals” supporting Ms Daly’s personal circumstances, safety and security concerns, supported “carried significant weight”, the inspector backed the council’s arguments that the fence was visibly unacceptable.

The report stated: “There is no substantive evidence before me to indicate that the appellant’s objectives in respect of safety and security could not be achieved through alternative boundary treatments or other measures that would be less visually intrusive and more consistent with the prevailing character of the area...

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“By reason of its height, length and close-boarded form, the fence is visually dominant and incongruous in the street scene, eroding the established character of this gateway approach.”