It took more than the might of the Ramblers Association to finally mark the downfall of Nicholas van Hoogstraten but Dave Hewitt says they should be congratulated for their perseverance.
They might not yet have released anything by way of formal public comment but it's a safe bet that the staff of the Ramblers Association will already have downed a few celebratory drinks following Monday's conviction for manslaughter of Nicholas van Hoogstraten.
The Sussex-based property magnate (who also owns homes in Cannes, Monte Carlo and Florida) has long been the scourge of footpath walkers down south, having blocked - and, crucially, refused to unblock - a 140-year-old route across the High Cross Estate near Uckfield. The obstructions and impedimenta placed across the right of way include not just the traditional barbed wire and locked gates but also industrial-strength white goods and a barn, built astride the path.
Plenty of other footpaths across Britain have been illegally blocked in similar ways but few have suffered the added hassle of a landowner given to describing anyone who crosses him (or crosses his land) as "filth", "perverts", "the absolute scum of the earth" and so on. He has also openly described himself as "probably ruthless, probably violent".
The Ramblers have campaigned for years to regain access to the contested path. In light of what is now known about van Hoogstraten's contacts and his potential for orchestrating violence, the prime mover behind the re-opening campaign - Kate Ashbrook of the Ramblers, latterly of the Open Spaces Society - ought to be seen as something of a hero and a brave one at that.
The episode also shows the extent to which local authorities can be seen as close to powerless in trying to impose sanctions: at best, the legal processes are prohibitively slow and expensive. Despite having agreed with the Ramblers' arguments, East Sussex council came up against a massively wealthy and influential man who simply refused to heed their re-opening orders.
On 20 November last year, the council ordered van Hoogstraten's landowning company Rarebargain Ltd to pay a daily fine of £250 for each of three obstructions, plus a £5,000 fine for the illegal barn. This might sound like a lot of money to you or me, especially once it started to pile up day after day but to a man at that stage ranked as the 159th richest person in Britain (he was reckoned to have around £200m in 2001), it was just pennies. He ignored the order.
A fudge has also ensued whereby the council has sanctioned a path diversion around the edge of van Hoogstraten's land. This of course suited him very nicely and suggests that power and money win out over basic rights of access. Ashbrook took the council to court over this - and although she lost (and lost expensively), an appeal is to be heard in mid-October. By that time van Hoogstraten will have been sentenced on the manslaughter charge; it will be interesting to see to what extent this affects the access judgement.
Given the arrogance of his attitude to walkers and to the "low life" tenants via whom he has made much of his money, it was always likely to require a far more serious matter to finally bring van Hoogstraten to book. This Monday saw the tycoon convicted of having paid two hitmen to attack another property tycoon, Mohammed Raja, in July 1999. Mohammed Raja died after being stabbed and then shot in the head by van Hoogstraten's hired hands Robert Knapp and David Croke, both of whom have been given life sentences for murder. Van Hoogstraten himself will not be sentenced until psychiatric reports have been presented to the court but the presiding judge has already said that he is considering a life sentence. A judge in a previous court case described him as "an emissary of Beelzebub".
Quite what this means for the blocked footpath remains to be seen. Given that the crime for which van Hoogstraten has been convicted doesn't involve drugs or money laundering, it seems unlikely that his property can be confiscated or his funds sequestrated. That shouldn't prevent the council from forcibly re-opening any closed paths however and removing the illegal barn in the process. We'll see.
There is more background on all this on the Ramblers website, where the matter has gone on for so long as to merit a special section: www.ramblers.org.uk/news/vanhoogstraten
From a Scottish point of view we can only be thankful that van Hoogstraten doesn't own any property north of the border. The thought of what might have happened had he bought a Highland estate (which would have been well within his budget) scarcely bears thinking about.
Moving on from a situation in which a council struggled to make much progress, there is at least some slightly better news regarding the new track being bulldozed by Attadale Estate in the hills south of Glen Carron. Summit Talks focused on the situation here a couple of weeks ago, having been alerted by the Mountaineering Council of Scotland to the obliteration of the old stalking path leading through the pass to the north of Bendronaig Lodge. The estate's policy, as with a previous track ploughed over to Pait Lodge, appears to be "bulldoze first, answer awkward questions later". Thus half a kilometre of legally dodgy and ecologically disastrous track had already been dug by the time the matter came to public attention.
The MCofS has been chasing Highland Council over this situation however and this has in turn led to the Attadale Estate's agent having agreed (last Friday, 19 July) to a halt in the work pending a review by the council. For once, things happened quickly. Mike Dales of the MCofS reports that he only officially contacted the council on 18 July. The reply from John Greaves, Highland Council's Head of Development and Building Control, includes the comment that, "I have however spoken at length to the landowner's agent and with their full co-operation have got their agreement to halt work immediately to allow time to review the position thoroughly. The case officer [Simon Fraser] returns to work next Monday and the situation will be looked at then as a matter of priority."
So there is at least hope that the track will be stopped in its tracks. If the council does deem it an inappropriate development, then the next stage will be to see whether they insist that the estate restore the land to its former state - never an easy task but one which ought to be undertaken here.
More on this of course as the situation develops. The MCofS site is worth a look, especially as it includes pictures of diggers and earthworks (although, thankfully, no white goods as yet). See www.mountaineering-scotland.org.uk/news
For now, as Dales says, the main thing is that the pressing of the pause button will allow the council "to reassess the case and perhaps enable us to have a debate without the sound of machinery in the background".
Dave Hewitt
25/7/2002
Dave can be contacted at dave.hewitt@dial.pipex.com
