Property expert Sarah Beeny has become embroiled in a planning row with neighbours over landscaping at her £3 million country pile.
The former presenter of Property Ladder moved with her family to a 220-acre former dairy farm in Somerset in 2019, and the Channel 4 series Sarah Beeny's New Life In The Country has followed her ambitious plans to transform the site into a dream home.
However, Ms Beeny’s plans have met with objections from her neighbours, one of which has complained that the former farm was made “a mess” thanks to works to dig out ponds and erect earthworks at the edge of the property.
These works at the farm near the town of Bruton, which has become known as the "new Notting Hill" for its host of wealthy residents including George Osborne and Stella McCartney, have met with disapproval from local parish councils.
One council complained that “being local, we feel it has changed the landscape for the worse”, adding on the earthworks at Ms Beeny’s property: “It would appear no engineering design or thought has gone into the creation of these banks.”
The earth banks were made with spoil dug up during building work for a three-storey, seven-bedroom stone house which has been constructed from scratch on the vast estate - which is home to more than 1,000 sheep - and more spare soil leftover from the digging of ponds.
In a planning application submitted by Ms Beeny and her husband Graham Swift, it was stated that earthworks made from the spoil were “attractively landscaped” and capable of providing an ideal home for wildlife, wildflowers, and newly-planted trees.
However, another parish council has complained about the “height and shape” of one of the earth embankments, stating that “it is having the effect of reflecting traffic noise” towards neighbouring properties and “adversely affecting the residents’ living conditions”.
Ms Beeny's family agreed to reduce the height of the bank when possible, according to planning documents from 2022, which state that other neighbours were not happy with works at the former dairy farm.
One complained that the works “dumped the spoils on good agricultural land”, meaning that “the farm is now a mess”.
The row over the earthworks, for which Ms Beeny and Mr Swift are still seeking retrospective planning permission, is not the first run-in with neighbours in rural Somerset, where the couple and their four sons moved to from London.
In December 2022, there were questions over the future of an ornate alpine treehouse which had featured in a New Life In The Country, for which Ms Beeny and her husband are seeking planning permission, despite having already built the structure.
Ms Beeny has been contacted for comment on the plan for her home in Somerset used as the focus for her recent Channel 4 series, which has shown the property expert get to grips with beekeeping, cider making, and sheep shearing.
The new stone house on the former farmer land boats “Gentleman’s Club” and “Medieval” themed bedrooms,
The property guru previously bought Rise Hall in Yorkshire for £435,000, which she and her husband restored and then sold for £1.4 million in 2019. Work on the house was documented in the Channel 4 series Beeny's Restoration Nightmare.
Last year, Ms Beeny announced that she would undergo treatment for breast cancer, with her final round of chemotherapy completed in early January 2023.
