A couple’s tunnel vision on a cliff brings neighbors to the brink of despair as homeowners plan to build an underground passageway to their balcony on the Isle of Wight coast
- With its seafront location and private cliff-top viewing platform, it’s already enviable
- But its owners want to build an underground tunnel from the house to the platform
- Richard and Karen Dance applied for planning permission for it on the Isle of Wight
- But neighbors accused the dances of treating the village “like a playground”.
With its seafront location and private cliff-top viewing deck offering spectacular views, it is already an enviable holiday home.
But what the owners, husband and wife team Richard and Karen Dance, are missing is an underground tunnel from the house to the viewing platform.
So the wealthy couple have applied for planning permission to build – and it’s gotten under the skin of some Isle of Wight neighbors.
With its seafront location and private cliff-top viewing deck offering spectacular views, it is already an enviable holiday home
But what the owners, husband and wife team Richard and Karen Dance, are missing is an underground tunnel from the house to the viewing platform
They have accused the Dances, both in their 50s, of treating the village of Sandown, famous for its golden beaches and beautiful bay on the island’s south coast, “like a playground”. Some locals fear the “extravagant” plan could damage the cliff – and undermine property prices, too.
Proposals submitted to the designers show Mr Dance wants to build the “unique” 25-foot underground passageway from the basement of their family home, under the front yard and to the platform overlooking the bay.
When the house was built in the early 20th century a tunnel to the platform was partially dug but access to the house was never completed. Company directors Mr and Mrs Dance, who run a range of convenience stores and live in Brockenhurst in Hampshire’s New Forest, bought their holiday home on the Isle of Wight for £470,000 in 2013. It is now valued at £650,000.
They want to expand the basement and build a new tunnel connecting it to the existing section. The motion states that “the proposal is essentially a domestic extension” that aims to “complete the circuit as originally intended in the 1920s”.
When the house was built in the early 20th century a tunnel to the platform was partially dug but access to the house was never completed. Company directors Mr and Mrs Dance, who live in Brockenhurst in Hampshire’s New Forest, bought their holiday home on the Isle of Wight for £470,000 in 2013. It is now valued at £650,000
The entrance to the old tunnel is 30 feet from the property and is not visible from any public vantage point. You have to know it’s there in order to see it.”
The proposed tunnel will result in “an unusual feature for the occupants of the home” and there would be “no physical impacts above ground, apart from the skylight used to provide natural lighting of the tunnel”.
It has sparked heated debate and divided opinion in the normally quiet community.
Isle of Wight Council, which will decide whether the tunnel can go ahead, received six objections and six supporters, according to its website. The public consultation ended on Friday.
Neighbor Irmgard Keen, 66, a retired carer, says: ‘A project like this is used as a playground by people who don’t live here permanently [could cause] Harm to the community living here.
“You’d better be spending that money supporting the cliff… Some people don’t know what to do with their money.” She and her husband Chris, 65, a retired computer software worker, are trying to sell their home and fear the tunnel could devalue nearby properties. Mr Keen said: “It just seems like an extravagance… Like a bit of gambling for an unnecessary reason.”
Lake City Council says the tunnel could affect the stability of the cliffs and has recommended that the application be rejected.
However, Dances’ structural consultant Such Salinger Peters argues that the tunnel would improve the cliff’s stability because it is constructed of steel-reinforced cast concrete, masonry and waterproof membranes.
Geoff Long, a geologist who lives a few doors down, said, “Why wouldn’t anyone want to do something beautiful on their property? … Can’t we do this in a more neighborly way?”
Mr Dance declined to comment.