Starbucks millionaire ordered to dig up tennis court and home gym after his planning application is scuppered by wife’s herd of alpacas
A wealthy businessman has been ordered to dig up his tennis court and tear down a home gym after losing a planning row.
Mark Hepburn, 54, has been given six months to remove the court built on agricultural land behind his six-bedroom home in Durley, Hampshire.
The entrepreneur, who until last year owned 23.5 Degrees, a company operating 110 Starbucks coffee franchises across the UK, claimed the land had been used as a garden by previous owners and his family.
However, a planning inspector has upheld the council’s decision to refuse his application to formally convert the land to residential use.
Mr Hepburn appealed the decision but that has now been rejected on the grounds the development has an ‘unacceptable effect on the rural character’.
It means that everything on it, except for a railway carriage, will need to be removed.
Businessman Mark Hepburn attending a planning hearing in Winchester, Hampshire, last year
A planning inspector has upheld the council’s decision to refuse his application to formally convert the land to residential use, after he argued previous owners regarded it as a garden
Details of Mr Hepburn’s case emerged at a planning inquiry in Winchester, Hampshire, during his failed appeal against the city council’s decision.
Mr Hepburn bought the property for £740,000 in December 2017.
In evidence submitted to the inquiry, Mr Hepburn said when the previous owners had shown him around the property it was the ‘extensive garden’ that appealed the most.
They told him how they had used it to walk their dogs and installed rope swings on the tree for their children, he added.
After his family moved in, Mr Hepburn said they fulfilled a dream of his wife’s by buying a herd of alpacas, which lived on the land at the back.
However, because they were pets rather than for commercial use, in 2021 he was asked by the council to apply for a lawful development certificate stating that the land was in residential use, not agricultural.
He made the application in May 2023 and it was refused by Winchester City Council two months later.
A planning inquiry was told that the lawful development certificate was denied because the council did not believe the field had been used as a garden continuously for ten or more years, the threshold for certification.
But in late 2023, after the refusal, Hepburn constructed a bar and a gym housed in timber huts as well as a television room.
The following year, he added a tennis and netball court. He told the inquiry that he believed the additions were covered under permitted development rights.
Neighbours voiced objections, arguing that the land has historically been used for horticulture and pasture rather than residential purposes.
At the inquiry in January last year, Mr Hepburn said the house ‘wasn’t the nicest’ but it had an ‘extensive garden’. He added: ‘With a young family that is important. We spent more time viewing the garden than the house.
He said his wife loved alpacas and always wanted them as a child.
‘Our dream was to own alpacas, they eat the grass and they are inquisitive, they come up and approach you,’ he explained.
To support the application, Mr Hepburn had submitted statutory declarations from him and the previous owner stating that the field had been used as a garden – stretching back as far as 1988.
But planning inspector Robert Hitchcock said there was ‘insufficient evidence’ for the change, as well as ‘contrary’ information suggesting the site had been used agriculturally in recent years.
A planning inspector has now reviewed Mr Hepburn’s appeal and dismissed every aspect of it, except for allowing the railway carriage to stay.
He said: ‘I conclude that the appellant has demonstrated that the railway carriage is immune from enforcement action as operational development and that its removal cannot be required.
‘The character of the land has therefore changed from that of a largely undeveloped medium-sized field parcel to one where a residential use forms a significant component.
‘In my judgement, that change erodes the rural character of the predominantly undeveloped field and diminishes the relationship between the surrounding countryside and the established residential development.
‘It also introduces a greater degree of domestic activity, lighting and residential paraphernalia into an area which presently contributes to the relatively tranquil rural setting.
‘This change to the character and appearance of the site gives rise to an unacceptable effect on the rural character of the area, conflicting with the prevailing landscape character and causing the identified harm.’
Cllr Jackie Porter, of Winchester City Council, said: ‘It’s reassuring that the Inspector’s decision supports our position and confirms that our enforcement action was right and justified.
‘Planning enforcement plays an important role in protecting our district to ensure that development is appropriate for Winchester and follows proper planning process.
‘I’d like to thank our enforcement team for working on this case for a number of years. Now we’ll continue to work with the landowner to ensure the necessary action takes place within the timescale set by the Inspector.’
