Residents are celebrating victory in an emotional 18-month battle to save their homes from demolition.

People living in over 50s park homes at Port Werburgh in Hoo received enforcement notices from Medway Council telling them their properties had been built illegally and would be flattened.

It followed a mix-up over boundary lines. Medway Council claimed six of the homes had been built outside of the agreed area and therefore had no planning consent.

The strongly-worded letter, which arrived in September 2022, included claims the homes, plants, roads, services supplying gas and electricity were to be ripped up, brickwork demolished and the land returned to its original condition within seven months.

But site owner Denis Swann claimed Medway Council was wrong and had mistakenly put the boundary line for the land to be developed in the wrong place.

He said he did have permission to build on that part of land and started a bitter battle to prove it.

The nine residents, who had already been living at the Vicarage Lane site, for three years, were “devastated”.

David Card, 74, said: “It was a shocking letter to receive.

“We had moved here for a better life and we were being forced to leave.

“It made our hearts drop to read the letter. It was very heavy and very frightening.”

James Holloway, 63, added: “We had ploughed all our life savings into the property and sold our large family home to move here.

“We moved my 87-year-old mum in to live with us. We had nowhere else to go.

“It was a really worrying time. I have cancer and so do two of the other residents, so the added stress was not good for us.”

James’s wife Wendy, 64, said the thought of leaving was heartbreaking.

“We moved here to enjoy our retirement. It’s a really nice community and we all get on really well. We all take care of each other.”

And it meant they couldn’t plan a future.

Mr Holloway said: “We couldn’t do any decorating or planting. It was very stressful.”

Mr Swann, 68, led the fight and said he felt sorry for the residents who had to go through months of uncertainty.

“It was so wrong of the council to put everyone through this drama,” he said.

He explained he had been granted permission for 30 on-shore and 30 off-shore homes, but Medway Council claimed six of them were outside the agreed area and therefore illegal.

As a result, the enforcement appeal required the cessation of the land for residential purposes and the removal of anything built on it.

But Mr Swann said it was the council’s mistake and they had put the red line in the wrong place.

He said the council continued to come up with new reasons why the buildings should be destroyed as he continued to fight the enforcement notice, including suggestions of noise pollution, despite there already being 400 park homes on the marina site.

“We were not talking about six homes in a village field in the middle of nowhere.

“There are 250 park homes next door and 30 homes on the same piece of land. It was in keeping with what is in the area.”

The case went to public appeal in December but the residents had to wait another six weeks before hearing they had won.

The Planning Inspectorate concluded that although the area appears not to have been included when Mr Swann got permission for 30 homes on the shore, he had believed it was part of the same site and the inspectorate agreed that it was.

“It was concluded I didn’t need to get retrospective planning permission and that mattered to me,” Mr Swann said.

“Even though the council made me apply for it and turned it down, which put added stress on the people living there, it exonerated me and what I had been accused of.

“It proved what we went through was completely unnecessary.”

Medway Council confirmed Mr Swann got planning permission to install a number of mobile homes within a marked area on his marina some years ago.

It said he placed six of the homes outside of that area, near a location used for potentially noisy industrial activity leading the council to serve an enforcement notice on the basis that the homes were not in the pre-agreed area and that industrial noise could potentially result in a poor level of amenity for occupants.

Following the appeal the council said the inspector concluded the marina was “effectively one planning unit”, meaning Mr Swann could place mobile homes on any part of the site, which meant the inspector did not have to consider the impact on amenity.

It stated that the marked line delineating the mobile home area was part of the application, and was not marked by the council.