Colchester

Unauthorised To Let board lands Essex agent with £3,000 fine

An estate agency in Colchester has been fined more than £3,000 by the local authority after contesting an earlier prosecution that it had placed an authorised To Let board on a block of flats. Saxons, which has an office on the town’s historic high street, originally had charges brought against it in April this year, along with three other agents, for displaying unauthorised boards around the town. The other agents were William H Brown, Spicerhaart and David Martin who admitted the charges and were each fined £500 plus costs. But Saxons’ Senior Property Manager Jeff Hamblion denied that their board on a block of flats in the Hythe Hill area to the east of the town centre had been placed incorrectly, claiming that “some drunk, or someone else” had moved it from a legitimate location. The case against them has only now been heard. To Let board Saxons lost and must now pay a £1,000 fine and costs totalling £2,047. It has also been revealed that the company, along with the other agents, had been warned by Council planning enforcement officers on “a number of occasions about their advertisement boards yet still continued to erect boards without the necessary consent”,…