A PLETTENBERG Bay informal trader has lost a David and Goliath battle with the Bitou Municipality to keep trading at a prime beachfront spot.

Sean Walmsley, accused of being a public nuisance, has been ordered by the High Court to remove his fast food stall from the Beacon Isle Hotel parking lot.

The Bitou Municipality applied for the eviction order last month, saying that Walmsley had refused to leave the site after his one-month lease expired at the end of December.

Circuit Court judge Essa Moosa ordered Walmsley to vacate the site by October 31.

Walmsley, however, said he intended to appeal against the ruling.

Moosa said the permit to trade from the site, which the municipality had issued to Walmsley’s former business partner, Steph Burger, was not transferable.

Even if Burger had ceded his share in the partnership to Walmsley, the municipality had not given Walmsley authorisation to trade on the site.

Moosa also rejected Walmsley’s claim that a tacit lease agreement had come about because he had paid the municipality rent after December.

Because “there were no express terms of a lease in respect of the site” between Walmsley and the municipality, “no tacit lease could be inferred”.

In fact, the municipality had rejected the rent after December because the site had only been available for trading for one month, Moosa said.

Walmsley’s claim that the municipality had failed to commission an environmental impact study for the construction of additional parking, a storm water channel and a retaining wall at the Beacon Isle parking area did not constitute a valid defence on the issue of whether or not he had a valid permit to trade.

While the court empathised with Walmsley, “who is trying to eke out an honest existence”, it could not ignore that he was delaying the development of public facilities.

Walmsley was ordered to pay the municipality’s legal costs.

Walmsley insisted yesterday that the trading permit had been renewable on a monthly basis, and not just for December. He said his partnership with Burger dated back to before the fast food outlet was set up, which meant the permit also applied to him.

Also, the environmental impact process which the municipality had been forced to undertake meant that no work could take place around the trading site before January.

“So why can’t they let me continue trading until the end of the next high season, after which I will pack up and leave?”