Neighbours living near Sarah Beeny‘s ‘mini-Downton Abbey’ mansion have hit out at the presenter and demanded unauthorised buildings on her multi-million pound estate be torn down.
The Property Ladder host has been fighting a long-running battle with local residents and Somerset Council over planning applications to completely overhaul the rural estate she bought for £3million in 2018.
She has been documenting the progress on the Channel 4 series Sarah Beeny’s New Life in the Country.
Now council planners have refused her latest bid to keep the original four-bed 1970s farmhouse that she agreed to demolish in 2020 when given permission for her new mansion.
But she went ahead with extending the building without permission instead and then applied retrospectively to keep the wood-lined home office, along with new French doors and a first floor balcony.
The Property Ladder host Sarah Beeny (pictured) has been fighting a long-running battle with local residents and Somerset Council over planning applications to completely overhaul the rural estate she bought for £3 million in 2018
The renovations featured on Sarah’s Channel 4 series New Life in the Country
After this was knocked back by the council in May, the Property Ladder presenter is fighting back and has put in an appeal with the Planning Inspectorate
The 52-year-old also put in a retrospective application for a huge treehouse, boathouse and greenhouse, and to change agriculture land into part of the garden. Yet again, this work was all done without council permission.
Now fed-up locals near the mansion in Stoney Stoke, Somerset, have urged the council to follow the example of Captain Tom’s daughter Hannah Ingram-Moore by ordering unauthorised buildings be torn down.
Neighbour Kevin Flint, 73, a retired IT worker, said: ‘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.
‘She knows what she is doing but thinks because you can’t see the property she can get away with whatever she likes.
‘I think the fair thing would be for anything unauthorised on the site to be demolished like Captain Tom’s daughter.
‘Unfortunately I think she will just keep putting in appeals until the local authority can’t afford to keep fighting and gives up.’
Neighbour Kevin Flint, 73, a retired IT worker, said the unauthorised buildings should be torn down
Four years after agreeing to knock down ab=n original 1970s farmhouse, Sarah Beeney, 52, went ahead with extending the building without permission instead
Former engineer Bill Heath, 77, said Ms Beeny does ‘whatever she likes’
Former engineer Bill Heath, 77, added: ‘I don’t necessarily feel any animosity towards her but I do to her audacity, we all have to abide by the rules and so should she.
‘It’s not one law for them and one for us. I did something silly previously and did some work without permission and I was brought up to the Magistrates’ Court, that should happen to her too.
‘The council should send in the bulldozers but they don’t seem to have any teeth, in this country there is too much talk and not enough doing.
‘She’s just doing whatever she flaming well likes. I’m not shocked by it but I’m surprised and annoyed I have this going on next to me.’
Now the TV presenter and husband Graham Swift are fighting back and have put in an appeal with the Planning Inspectorate – with her design team producing a 125-page document to argue their case.
Beeny said that she used the home office to work from home during the pandemic and it was also used as a bedroom for her father when he came to stay after an illness.
She said that the home office, on metal skids, was not ‘built beautifully’ so she intended to redo it if permission was granted.
Charlton Musgrove parish council strongly objected to the work done without permission. The council said: ‘We find this retrospective application for an extension to a house that should have been demolished conflicting and would not support either the application to retain the farmhouse or retrospective application for the extension.’
One of the buildings at the centre of the storm is a recently constructed treehouse (pictured)
The TV star has also come under fire for a boat house built on the property
With regards to other additions like the treehouse, the council states: ‘Council remains concerned about the loss of agricultural land.
‘The curtilage is a lot larger than the original application and is not justified for the scale of the development.’
With regards to the treehouse, the council said: ‘Council remains concerned about the loss of agricultural land. The curtilage is a lot larger than the original application and is not justified for the scale of the development.’
Beeny claimed she only sought retrospective permission for the treehouse because she is a TV star, saying: ‘That has been built but, to be honest, it’s a treehouse and the local authority knew we built it. Nobody has got a problem that we built it, no one has commented on it. You can’t see it from anywhere.
‘Most people wouldn’t apply for permission to build a treehouse but … because I’m in the public eye, I’ve applied. But I don’t think most people who live in the middle of nowhere on a farm would apply to build a treehouse.
Despite some neighbours’ vocal objections, she insists she is good friends with most of them, she added: ‘The greenhouse is a greenhouse. It’s got tomatoes in it. We’re applying because technically you should have planning permission but no one’s got a problem with it … Most of our neighbours are really, really good friends.’