Farmer must demolish the castle he hid in a haystack

Robert Fidler, a 64-year-old farmer from Salfords in Surrey, has been ordered to demolish his mock Tudor mansion. He had tried to get around planning rules, by hiding the home in a haystack, but his cunning plan was fatally flawed.

Fidler built the property on greenbelt land at Honeycrock Farm in 2002. It's an impressive mock Tudor castle, complete with ramparts and a cannon, which he refers to as a work of art. While he was building the property, he also built a 40 foot stack of hay bales around the structure, so that passers by wouldn't have a clue there was a home inside.

He believed that even if he built without planning permission, if nobody complained for long enough, he could apply for retrospective planning permission, and would be bound to have it granted.

Unfortunately for him, when he unveiled the home in 2008 and applied for permission, Reigate and Banstead Borough Council refused permission, and insisted that the home be knocked down.

Over the years he has issued a number of appeals, taking the case all the way to the High Court, and then appealing to the Department for Communities and Local Government. Now his final appeal has been refused. The council told the BBC: "The construction breached national and local planning rules designed to protect the green belt, which local authorities like ours have a duty to uphold."

He told the Daily Mirror this week that he had stopped trying to save his home, and would demolish it. He said he had been given 90 days to knock it down, or face jail.
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Demolished

It's a terrible day for Fidler and his family, and they are unlikely to take a crumb of comfort from the fact that they are far from the first to face this prospect.

We reported last April on the family from Bishopbriggs near Glasgow, who had been ordered to knock down their newly-built dream home - and pay £11,500 for the privilege. The family had obtained planning permission, but during the building process, they were persuaded to push the boundaries - building it wider and higher, with too many windows, and an unapproved balcony. The family said they had been advised they would get retrospective permission, but the council decided the new home was unacceptably different from the one they were given permission for - so they had to knock it down.

The previous month, we covered the story of the couple from Norfolk who had been forced to knock their home down because it was 18 inches too wide. The couple had moved onto a greenbelt site, and battled for five years to keep two mobile homes there - on the grounds that they had gypsy status. After getting permission, they installed two mobile homes, and a conservatory, and were told by the council that because the structure was 18 inches wider than they had been given permission to build, the whole lot would have to go.

The September before that, an enormous mansion in Bedfordshire was ordered to be demolished, after the owner pushed his luck with the planning authorities. He had bought a five-bedroom bungalow in 2008 and gained permission to extend it by 45% in 2011. However, after a complaint from one of the neighbours, the council investigated, and discovered that the final building was actually three times bigger than the original building, and included two extra floors and a turret. Retrospective planning permission was refused, and he was ordered to demolish the £2 million house.


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