the times | Monday February 21 2022 17
News
Three women in their seventies accused
of acting as a “cartel” have evicted
another longstanding tenant without
explanation from a row of prized beach
huts in Weymouth, Dorset.
Maureen Smethurst, a retired
teacher, said that she had been left
“close to tears” after getting a blunt
letter telling her to vacate her cabin in
Greenhill Gardens.
Six families and a sea-swimming club
have also been kicked out by the direc-
tors of Greenhill Community Trust,
which manages the 45 huts, for what
Smethurst claimed was no apparent
reason and with no explanation.
The directors — Sue Bray, Janis
Chalker and Janet Cridland — are ac-
cused of acting in their own interests
and are understood to have kept their
own huts while evicting others.
Smethurst said: “It is disappointing to
lose the use of the chalet but far more
disappointing is the... rude, arrogant
and dismissive tone of the directors in
their limited communication with us.”
When she called Bray to challenge
her eviction, the director told her: “I
don’t hold out much hope for you.” She
then wrote to the other directors asking
for an explanation and received a “terse
and angry” response.
Writing in bold, capitalised text, the
directors said they were under “no obli-
gation” to renew a licence and under
“no circumstances” would the decision
be reversed. In a second letter, they
wrote in capitals: “For the avoidance of
doubt, the Greenhill Community Trust
informs you this is the final communi-
cation on this subject.”
According to one tenant, the chalets
cost £1,035 per year. The management
of the huts and the surrounding garden
areas was given to the not-for-profit
group in 2019 by Dorset council. The
council said the agreement allowed the
trust “to manage all aspects of the
property, including chalet licence fees”.
Smethurst said she understood that
the directors were evicting long-term
tenants in an attempt to “manage the
turnover better”, but noted that none of
them had given up their chalets.
She said: “One might suggest they
have taken on this role [as directors] in
order to safeguard their own chalets.
They are fine as long as nobody ques-
tions what they’re up to. If you do, then
they get very touchy.”
The directors have sent eviction
letters to at least six other families in
recent months.
Vicky Winslow, 42, an office
manager, said that her parents, Mike
and Gay Huggins, had rented a chalet
since the 1990s but were being forced to
leave next month. She said that they
had been model tenants who paid their
fees on time and maintained it to a high
standard. “It is devastating, I have not
seen my mum this upset in years,”
Winslow said.
Elizabeth and Tony Fisher have been
tenants since 1987 and visit their chalet
daily between May and October each
year as they are keen sea swimmers.
They received a letter from the trust
saying they could no longer lease the
chalet and there was no right of appeal.
Fisher, 69, a retired modern langua-
ges teacher, said they had been told
they did not renew their lease in time,
which they claim was untrue. “I got my
husband to deliver the application by
hand when he walked the dog,” she said.
“The sour taste... from the suspicion
that one has been unfairly dislodged
remains.”
The Weymouth Bay Sea Swimmers
started a petition after claiming they
were “unlawfully evicted” from their
changing facility. Bray was approached
for comment, but said: “No, we do not
talk about individual people. We’re not
getting into who said what.”A councillor fighting to have public bins
and toilets installed in his home island
in the Isles of Scilly must take diversity
training after he accused officials of
creating “conditions similar to those in
Bergen-Belsen or Dachau”.
Toby Tobin-Dougan, 63, the inde-
pendent parish councillor for St Mar-
tin’s, the northernmost island in the
archipelago, made the “crass assertion”
in an email to a fellow councillor and
council officers.
A scrutiny committee found that his
comments, made in October, were “of-
fensive in the extreme” and had been
designed to “bully the recipients”.
St Martin’s has no public waste bins
and one public toilet at Higher Town
quay. Tobin-Dougan said that the toilet
was not enough for the 400 trippers
that the island has daily in the summer.
He has been ordered to write a
“meaningful apology” and to have
diversity training, “with an emphasis on
the need to ensure that respect should
be given to the Holocaust”.
Tobin-Dougan told The Times that
he was not a bully and that the email
Dachau claim puts Scilly
councillor in the sin-bin
had been sent “in the heat of the
moment”. Asked about his comparison
to Nazi concentration camps, he said: “I
would just let other people make up
their own minds whether in 2022 it’s
acceptable for people not to be provided
with toilets and somewhere to put their
waste.”
An anonymous, independent person
on the scrutiny committee said that the
comparison was “outrageous, beyond
all decency” and besmirched the Nazis’
victims. “Were I able to, I would have no
hesitation in recommending [Tobin-
Dougan] be suspended,” they said.
About 125,000 people visit the Isles
of Scilly each year and most do day trips
to the outer islands.
Tobin-Dougan, a handyman and
photographer, said he felt he had been
the subject of a “witch hunt... It’s a love-
ly place to live down here, but it reminds
me a bit of In The Heat Of The Night
with Sidney Poitier [about a racist small
town in Mississippi]. It’s not me, but
some have said it’s a bit like a lot of red-
necks. Not me, I haven’t said that.”
The parish council said it had begun
a collaboration with the Duchy of
Cornwall, which owns the land on the
off-islands, to provide litter bins.Will Humphries
Southwest Correspondent
MAX WILLCOCK/BNPS‘Cartel’ strikes again in battle of the beach huts
Ben Clatworthy
MAX WILLCOCK/BNPS
Maureen
Smethurst was
left “close to
tears” after
being told she
had to vacate
her beach hut