Home is where the hay barn is!

A couple has recently lost the right to continue to live in a £500,000 luxury home, that was disguised as a hay barn.

Having applied in 2001 for planning permission to build a hay barn in a Green Belt zone, they promptly built what appeared to be a hay barn but on the inside was in fact a luxury 3-bedroom home, complete with gym.

In 2006 they then applied to have a certificate of lawfulness to allow them to use the building as their home, on the basis that under planning law any enforcement action had to be taken within 4 years of the use of the building changing.

Unsurprisingly, the Supreme Court was unimpressed and ruled that the provisions they looked to rely on did not apply, and that even if they did, he would not have been allowed to profit from his own wrong.

Calum Irvine
calum.irvine@birkettlong.co.uk