Sarah Beeny faces having to demolish entire HOUSE at £3m estate after row with council explodes
PROPERTY guru Sarah Beeny has been ordered to demolish a huge extension she’s built on her £3m estate.
The extensive work turned her large country pile into a “mini Downtown Abbey” and featured in her hit TV show.
However, locals claim she’s just like Captain Tom’s daughter, Hannah Ingram-Moore, who famously built a spa complex on her property without planning permission and was forced to tear it down.
The controversial charity boss claimed the building at her Marston Moretaine home, Bedfordshire, was partly being used by her late father’s foundation.
Sarah, 53, has been in a bitter six-year fight with neighbours and the local council to completely overhaul her rural estate in Somerset, which she bought for £3m in 2018.
Four years after agreeing to knock down the original 1970s farmhouse, Sarah went ahead with extending the building without permission and then applied retrospectively.
But this was knocked back by the council in May.
Sarah and her husband, Graham Swift, appealed this decision with the Planning Inspectorate but it was dismissed last week, and now it seems virtually inevitable she will have to knock down the home.
There is currently a live enforcement notice for the farmhouse to be razed to the ground.
The council has said in a statement that they are “reviewing the case in respect of further action”.
But added: “The live enforcement case is in relation to the breach of condition and Section 106 that requires the demolition of the original dwelling.”
Sarah’s New Life in the Country Channel 4 series has been charting her extensive renovation.
She had previously asked to build a completely new home – this was granted as long as the old home and its outbuildings were completely demolished.
She went ahead and built the new dwelling, yet didn’t get rid of the old farmhouse, and extended it, adding new French doors and a first floor balcony.
There were issues regarding bat roosts in the farmhouse, which would be disturbed by the works, and the planning inspector’s report states that they doubt a licence for the bats from Natural England will be issued.
There were also numerous complaints from the parish council and residents about the works.
Neighbour Kevin Flint told the Mail Online: ‘It’s created a lot of bad feeling in the village.
“She was given permission to build the new house on condition she knocked down the old one which she extended and refurbished, it’s just not on.
“She thinks she can move down here and ride roughshod over everybody but it’s not going to happen.
“I think the fair thing would be for anything unauthorised on the site to be demolished like Captain Tom’s daughter.”
Earlier this year, she scrapped plans to turn two barns into four new homes after a furious row with locals.
Half a dozen locals objected to the proposed development and said she had “blatantly ignored” an enforcement notice ordering her to remove earth banks built without planning permission.