PENSIONERS have lost their fight to overturn a legal requirement which every year forces them from their homes.

A dozen residents of High Beech Chalet Park, St Leonards, gathered at a council meeting last night to hear if their challenge had been successful.

They were calling on the council to relax a planning condition which dictates they must vacate their holiday bungalows for two weeks in January and four weeks in February.

The pensioners, forced to spend hundreds of pounds on hotel accommodation each year, were hoping to reduce the six-week period to four weeks.

But Hastings Council's Planning Committee voted against the move, saying it would open the flood gates for people to buy up holiday homes, creating shanty-town developments throughout the South.

Coun Godfrey Daniel, Mayor of Hastings, said: "This is a leisure facility that people are trying to turn into permanent accommodation. But it is not.

They are holiday homes.

"The reason we will not allow it is to prevent shanty towns being developed in the area.

"Residents of High Beech were well aware of the conditions, which have been considerably relaxed over the years anyway."

Over the years, the stay-away period enforced by the council has come down from eight months to the current six weeks.

In 1993 an appeal by residents to overturn the condition reached the Secretary of State. He threw it out.

But Vi and Norman Kennedy, who have to spend £150 a week during the six weeks they are out of their chalet home, said: "We pay community tax like everyone else."

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