Defiant Colin Noddings was behind bars today after losing a long battle to get planning permission for his home.

He was first fined £1,000 for breaching two Basildon Council orders to demolish his mobile home in Break Egg Hill, Billericay.

Then Noddings, who must also pay £1,000 court costs, was jailed for 14 days for jumping bail during his one-man campaign.

Jobless Noddings, who has three sons, was given a year to pay the fines or face a further 28 days in prison.

He claimed at Basildon Crown Court that he was ill-advised by a so-called planning expert and a solicitor.

However, Judge Frank Lockhart told him: "I do not regard you as an innocent abroad. You have a long history of consistent delays and procrastination with the authorities over this matter."

Noddings' barrister, Gareth Nixon-Moss said: "He has little means. He must now find alternative accommodation and leave behind a property which has cost him thousands of pounds."

Mr Nixon-Moss told how Noddings' 15-year-old son Daniel became so depressed over his father's housing plight that he took an overdose.

The boy, who was found by police wandering the streets, was taken to Basildon Hospital where he recovered.

His 48-year-old father was originally served with two enforcement notices ordering him to restore the Billericay plotland to its previous condition. That included removing the home and driveway and not using the land to live on.

There was a three-month limit set for the work to be completed, which was suspended when Noddings put in an appeal, which he later withdrew.

From February 1998 he then had another three months in which to finish the work, a jury was told at an earlier hearing at Southend Crown Court.

Noddings and his ex-wife had bought the land in 1994 with the intention of building a house.

When their stormy marriage broke down in 1997 they sold their home, and Noddings put two caravans on the site for himself and his three sons.

The caravans were later taken off and replaced with another home which, although classed as mobile, is a more permanent structure. Planning permission was sought but was turned down after appeal.

Noddings insisted he had made attempts to re-house his family, which included a brief stay at his mother's home.

He was later offered a dilapidated house from which he was later evicted. It was then that he was forced to move back into the mobile home.

Noddings said he was desperate. He recalled: "I did go to the council to ask about housing - but they told me there was an eight-year waiting list."

Jailed - Colin Noddings

Converted for the new archive on 19 November 2001. Some images and formatting may have been lost in the conversion.