A hydrotherapy pool built in a back garden to help a disabled youngster may have to be pulled down - because it was put up without planning permission.

But yesterday the mum of four-and-a-half-year-old Joshua Newton vowed: "They will demolish it over my dead body."

Karen Newton claimed she was originally told that the pool, in the back garden of the family home in Lynton Road, Hadleigh, did not need planning consent.

Her son suffers from a muscle disease, spinal muscular atrophy, and often has breathing problems. He is confined to a wheelchair, but the pool enables him to move freely on his own.

Now a retrospective planning application has been submitted to Castle Point Council and members of the planning sub-committee have agreed to visit the site after one neighbour objected to the pool, claiming it is an eyesore.

Mrs Newton, 36, said: "I would like to see them try and pull it down. They would do that over my dead body. They would have to drive over me first."

The pool, built last summer, is used several times a week by Joshua. But the family has to travel from a rented house in Benfleet to use it after they were forced to move out last year following a string of botch-ups at their newly-built home.

Mrs Newton added: "Some people can be so small-minded. This is a special pool for Joshua which does not affect their lives in any way, shape, or form. It has benefited Joshua enormously. I can't tell you the difference it has made to him.

"His head control has increased so much. He actually holds it up which he can't do out of the water. He can even float on his own on his back and move his arms and legs to swim on his own.

"That is an experience he has never had in his life. He has never been able to move on his own out of the water. No amount of money in the world could ever buy that."

If councillors refuse planning permission, they have the powers to order the pool to be demolished.

In a letter to the planning sub-committee, neighbours Mr and Mrs J Mortimer complained that the pool was the size of a bungalow.

The neighbour said: "While we appreciate that it is of benefit to a disabled child, it is also used by many others and we have to put up with the noise and the extra cars in the road.

"This building now dominates our garden....(and the) ugly stainless steel chimney, too high to screen from view, an eyesore, devalues our property."

The family is expected to return to their home next month after work to repair the bungalow is completed.

A date for the site visit has yet to be arranged.

Heartbreak - little Joshua Newton faces losing his special pool

Picture: ROBIN WOOSEY

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