A FAMILY-RUN Penarth tyre fitting business has vowed to appeal against an enforcement order from the Vale Council to close down.

Penarth Tyres, which opened on Station Road seven months ago, was ordered to cease trading and remove all equipment from the premises by councillors from the authority’s planning committee last night (January 15).

The business, run by Chris Cronin and his father Mike, was served with the enforcement notice after a complaint was made to the council about the site being used as a tyre fitting shop.

After investigating the complaint the local authority found that the site, which was formerly a scaffolding business, does not have the correct planning permission for a tyre fitting business.

The site has permission for B8 use (storage and distribution) under the Town and Country Planning Order 1987, but it would need a B2 use (general industry) to operate as a tyre fitting business.

Councillors concluded that due to the closeness to surrounding residents the tyre business would “give rise to a level of noise and disturbance that unacceptably impacts upon residential amenity” and it should be served with an enforcement order to close down.

During a planning committee meeting on Thursday (January 15) Marcus Goldsworthy, operational manager for development and building control at the Vale of Glamorgan Council, said that the authority had sought to resolve the issue with the owner but there had been no action taken.

Penarth councillor Gwyn Roberts, who represents the St Augustine’s ward, asked if there had been attempts made to seek planning permission by the owner of the site to resolve the situation before reaching this stage.

Mr Goldsworthy said: “There have been no planning applications submitted and they have basically ignored us. They have made no attempt to comply with the council request. It is relevant that if they had submitted an application we may have been able to tie the use down to specifics, but we can’t do that through the enforcement procedure so the only thing we can do is seek them to cease using the premises.”

He added that the enforcement notice might encourage them to seek planning permission.

Chris Cornin, who runs the business with his father, said that the owner of the site would be appealing the enforcement notice, and that he had been liaising with the council via email about planning permission before the meeting up until December last year.

He added that in the meantime they would be carrying on as normal as they hoped to keep the business going.

Chris, who has invested all of his savings into the business, said that he was also unaware of any complaints from neighbours about the business.

“We get on fairly well with the neighbours here,” he said.

“One of them saying it was ‘diabolical’ before we moved in here and nothing could be as bad as that.”

He added: “There is not much noise coming from here as we use electric motors rather than air guns, and the compressor only gets used two or three times a day.”

His father Mike added: “We get on really well with the people in Penarth and we have had some really good support from people since the enforcement notice.”