The council has fined me £3,000 for flattening a wall that was constructed by ME and I’m being threatened by bailiffs – however I might moderately die in jail earlier than giving into their calls for

The council fined an elderly farmer £3,000 for knocking down a wall that he built himself and he says he refuses to give in and would prefer to ‘die in prison’.

Ron Knight, 89, has faced seven years of a ‘living nightmare’ since receiving a planning enforcement notice from the council for removing part of a concrete wall to allow access to his land.

He had built it himself in 1973, but when he took part of it down in 2017 he was told it was ‘historic’, in a ‘conservation’ area and he needed planning permission.

After missing the deadline to appeal, the pensioner has appeared in court multiple times and was even threatened with a jail term.

He even vowed to ‘die in prison’ rather than pay the resulting fine of nearly £3,000.

But he has now been threatened with enforcement action with letters stating bailiffs could raid his home and remove items to reclaim the losses.

The escalation has left his wife Jean, 81, fraught with anxiety.

But Mr Knight said the decision was ‘ridiculous’ and vowed to block any attempt to access his home.

He said: ‘I’ve now got a letter from the bailiffs saying they are going to come and take what they were owed in lieu of fines.

‘The whole thing is ridiculous. I can not make out how this has ended up going to court in the first place.’

Mr Knight said he reluctantly agreed to an order from a judge at the latest hearing to take £5 a month from his pension.

But he was later told this couldn’t be done so was told he needed to visit a post office to pay it off each time – a trip he says at his age and with his health he’s unable to do.

He added: ‘I’ve been to court so many times I’ve lost count. Last time a judge asked me how I was going to pay, I told them I couldn’t. They asked if I would be willing to have £5 a month come out of my pension.

‘I said yes and everything went ahead. Then I got a letter saying they could no longer take it out of my pension and sent me a card to go to the post office.

‘I am not doing that. The agreement with the judge is that they could take it out of my pension. That is how it is going to be.’

Last year he was told by a judge that he could face 45 days in prison unless he rebuilt the wall and repaid all fines.

But Mr Knight, who said his pleas have continued to fall on deaf ears, said he would rather be locked up ‘if it’s the last thing he does’ than accept he has done anything wrong.

He said: ‘It is getting us all down. We are all sick and tired and fed up. It doesn’t matter what we say, they don’t take any notice.’

Mr Knight moved to Milborne Port in 1957 and bought Cannon Court Farm with his two brothers around five years later.

When he sold it to retire to Devon in 1990 he kept six acres of land and three acres of allotments.

Rows then began with his neighbours who he claimed had ‘blocked access’ to his land and his ‘right of way’ through their own developments.

To allow him access to maintain the area and stop it becoming overgrown, he said he had no choice but to remove part of the wall.

Somerset Council has defended its actions and refused to consider his retrospective application while enforcement action remains ongoing.

Mrs Knight, 81, said: ‘We have just had a letter that control enforcement agents could come and take control of our goods.

‘My husband is in his 90th year. The steps being taken against him are ridiculous.

‘But in truth this has more impact on me – he is just not going to pay it – they sent him a post office card but he just can’t do it.

‘He can not even walk down to the post office. It’s rarely opened anyway and is a lot of all round difficulty.

‘It has caused a lot of angst to me – I’m not in the best of health but he is adamant he is not paying it.

‘This all started more than six years ago – how long does it have to go on for?

‘They don’t listen anyway. It is almost laughable the whole situation but we have to live with it everyday. We have never owed a penny in our lives and have always paid up front. That is how we were brought up. But the system is not working.’

Mr Knight said after they sold the land they had a ‘right of way’ to go through it as it was ‘the only way to get into it’.

He added: ‘It was then blocked completely. I got two grandsons to help me take part of the wall down. We got the foundation out and made a gap so we could go out with the tractors and everything.

‘I don’t know who reported us to the council but I had letter to say we had broken the law by digging out a conservation area – I did not know anything about a conservation area and neither did my two brothers.

‘Apparently the whole of Milborne Port was made one in 1988.

‘We had rebuilt that wall in 1973. They tried to argue we had taken down a historic wall. But if it’s a historic wall why was it not back exactly how it was before?

‘It is two foot lower now than it was. It is just a flat piece of concrete.’

He added: ‘It has been going on for seven years now and it’s been a bloody nuisance.’

Mr Knight has lived with his wife in Bampton, Devon, since selling the farm.

He added: ‘My argument is that if that wall was ours in 1973, it is our wall now. Why are they kicking up some a volatile fuss? All we did was take down a part to make an entrance into our property we had no other way of getting into.

‘I am not paying it – why should I if it belongs to me. I don’t care what they say or what they do.’

‘That person had no rights to cover that track. We had a right of way to that property for as long as we were there.

‘I just thought it was nice to keep a bit for the family.’

His daughter Linda said: ‘They said they would take £5 a month after pension.

‘He gave them permission to do that but for whatever reason it stopped, because of nothing my dad had done.

‘He had another letter with a pre-payment card to pay at the post office. But he is nearly 90, doesn’t drive and it takes a long time to get to the post office.

‘He just said it was ridiculous and doesn’t know why they can’t continue what had been agreed.

‘Now they are facing threats from bailiffs. My mum panicked straight away and fears they will come and take all their belongings. My dad is stubborn. He won’t pay them and won’t let them in.’

She added: ‘He bought the land in the 1950s and kept some back when it was sold – and that was one piece of it. The council was never interested what he had done all those years ago until now.

‘His case is it is his wall, why can’t he do work on it. There was no planning needed when he built it in 1970s.

‘Apparently the rules changed, where in ten years prior it would not have been an issue but new regulations were built in.

‘How is he supposed to maintain it if he can not access it? It is eight foot high in places and needed access to keep it trimmed back. Without that it would be all overgrown.

‘All correspondence goes to dad in Devon and he was served the enforcement notice in November 2017. He did not really understand what was going on. By the time we found out about it it was too late and he had lost the right to appeal.

‘My dad is 89 and has his health problems. He’s got a pacemaker and this is having health implications on him and my mum. He really stresses over it and it has been like a dark cloud hanging over us.

‘It is about time they showed some heart and compassion.’

Somerset Council said it was in the public interest to continue pursuing the matter, arguing that Mr Knight had caused ‘unjustified harm’ to a protected local structure.

A spokesman said: ‘We have applied the expediency test and public interest test to each step of this case.

‘We consider that the creation of the access, necessitating the demolition or removal of a wide section of the historic stonewall and associated engineering work to the land behind, fails to safeguard the established character of the conservation area and has caused unjustified harm to a designated heritage asset.’