The owner of a horse pension in Steenbergen is desperate. After a judge’s decision, the woman – a single mother with three children – has to get rid of several horses and also leave her home within a year. Through the Council of State she hopes to be able to turn the tide.
The woman bought the farm home and the accompanying company in 2015 together with her now ex-partner. A neighbor later indicated that he would experience the nuisance from the horse boarding. In his own words, he could no longer barbecue because of the flies, the manure hump would cause odor nuisance and take care of the horse path docks for drifting sand. Moreover, according to the applicable rules, the guest house should not be there at all.
The neighbor dragged the municipality of Noordenveld to court. In 2023, the judge ruled that a horse’s pension was indeed not legal. The municipality then had to make a decision again, but according to the neighbor, Noordenveld left that. After all kinds of conversations without a solution, it came to a new lawsuit. The man was again right, after which the municipality was encouraged to maintain the rules.
Noordenveld has now decided that the woman can keep four horses and dispose of the rest – three in total. Furthermore, she has to remove a fence around a horse bin sewn with grass. And to top it all off, she has to leave the house before August 2026 because it is a company home. You can only live there if you run a company, but what type of company the municipality does allow is unknown.
Through an appeal at the Council of State, the woman hopes will still be able to stay in the farm home. “For years the municipality did nothing, or hardly any enforcement and suddenly the municipality seems to have to make a point for a single mother with three children,” said her counselor. “And that after the man of the woman has abandoned her and she now only has the home, horses and children.”
The woman wants to know from the municipality what to do to continue to live in the home. But she doesn’t want to get rid of her beloved horses either. In the coming weeks, the Council of State will look at whether the woman should be granted more time to find a solution in consultation with the municipality, or whether she should give everything up: horses and the home.
The municipality sparkled during the court case in The Hague due to absence. The neighbor who had wandered the case was not there either.