Pippa Middleton Must Remove Car Park Built Without Planning Permission

Pippa Middleton, the younger sister of the Princess of Wales, has lost her appeal against a planning ruling and must remove a car park built on a meadow at her Berkshire home. The car park covers about 400 square metres at Barton Court, near Kintbury, and was built without planning permission.

Planning permission is the formal approval a council gives before land can be changed or built on. In this case, the couple applied for approval after the work was done, which is known as a retrospective application. They argued that anglers would use the car park and that income from fishing rights would help pay for upkeep of the land.

Council documents did not accept that case. They described the car park as visually intrusive and urbanised, and said it broke planning rules and eroded the rural character of the North Wessex Downs, a protected landscape. Hello reported that local parishioners were shocked by the development.

The matter then went to planning inspectors, the independent officials who decide appeals against council rulings. They found that the size of the car park directly harmed the local landscape. Middleton's appeal to overturn the ruling was dismissed in July, which leaves the couple required to take the car park out.

The meadow was once used for grazing and for cutting hay by Monty and Drummer, two heavy horses that pulled a barge on a nearby canal. The car park now sits where they worked and grazed, which is one detail that has drawn attention to the case locally.

Middleton's husband, James Matthews, is a hedge fund manager. He is reported to be 51 years old. The couple bought the Barton Court estate in 2022, and The Telegraph reported that they have lived there since then.

The estate has been the subject of another planning dispute this year. In September, the BBC reported that the couple had won a separate battle to stop part of their driveway being designated a public footpath. That ruling went in their favour, while the car park appeal did not.

Middleton is best known as a sister of the Princess of Wales, but this story concerns a private property and the planning rules that apply to it. Planning law applies to every landowner, whatever their profile. The car park case is a reminder that a building project can be stopped after it is finished, and that the cost of putting it right falls on the person who built it.