Plans for facility to breed 'very large' cats in East Yorkshire home's back garden refused

Plans for a facility to breed cats for sale in the back garden of a Goole home have been refused.

East Riding Council's Western Area Planning Sub-Committee refused the plans for the site in Western Road, Goole, designed to house 12 cats in total. Council officers recommended that Jekaterina Jermakova's plans be approved while two councillors and committee member and self-described cat hater Cllr Thomas Robson said complaints about it were exaggerated.

But Goole North's Cllr Nick Coultish told the committee several neighbours had objected over the noise and smell from cats as big as medium-sized dogs being bred there. Plans for the breeding site, parts of which have already been constructed, proposed keeping nine cats in the back garden at any time.

READ MORE:

• Plans for asphalt plant near East Riding village approved despite hundreds of objections

• Grand Designs-style house that 'looks like a high-security facility' turned down

Councillors heard the owner planned to breed Maine Coon cats, a large domestic breed which originated in the US. The applicant also owns three cats of their own.

Council planning officers stated in their report that there was no evidence that the number of cats planned at the site posed issues to their living conditions when recommending approval. The committee's Cllr Robson, of Bridlington North ward, said he could not go along with refusal of the plans.

The councillor said: "I'm not a cat lover, I'm a cat hater, but having said that the objections to this are rather exaggerated. I don't see a significant reason to refuse this."

Committee member Cllr Kevin Casson, of Cottingham South, said he never experienced issues from a cat sanctuary close to his home. The councillor said: "As long as you don't put male and female cats together there's no noise problems and there's no issue with smell if you put down litter trays. I haven't got a problem with this at all."

But 13 objections were lodged from neighbouring homes and Cllr Coultish said locals felt passionately that the plans would have an adverse impact on them. The ward member said: "This is the most objections I've ever received to an application in Goole despite being fairly modest in size.

"The type of cats being bred are very large, they're akin to a medium-sized dog. This is a commercial site in a residential area, residents feel this isn't appropriate and and there's lots of commercial space available in Goole."

Cllr Richard Meredith, who chaired the meeting, said: "This is over-development in one of the primary towns in the East Riding. There's plenty of commercial space available in Goole."