A property developer Alan Beesley and wife Sarah who disguised their £500,000 luxury house as a hay barn to outwit planning chiefs will have to tear down their home after losing a long running legal battle.
Trying to stop the demolition orders of the local authorities at the court too failed.
The couple had won permission to build the windowless barn to store hay 12 years ago but converted it into a three bedroom home with study, bathroom, a lounge and a gym.
After living there for four years they applied for the barn to be legally recognised as a home, but their actions incensed officers at Welwyn Hatfield Council in Hertfordshire.
They were refused permission which led the legal battle to go up to the Supreme Court in 2011 when seven judges bench ruled that they must leave the home.
The council followed the ruling up with enforcement notices ordering the internal residential structure of the barn to be torn down. The couple tried to stop the demolition but their latest appeal too failed.
Mr Beesley, 41, and his 38-year-old wife now have a year to move out and remove the building from the land at Northaw, near Potters Bar. He said that the legal battle had cost him tens of thousands of pounds.
After losing the latest appeal Mr Beesley said that it was the end. The appeal was not for the house but for the barn which has been ruled by the council to be demolished he said.
In 2011 when the Supreme Court had rejected their appeal the couple said they were absolutely devastated and gutted’. The couple built the house in Northaw, Hertfordshire, in 2001 and moved in a year later.
They hoped that the rule, where homeowners living in a property for more than four years could stay irrespective of whether they had planning permission or not, would come to their rescue but it was never to be.
Property lawyers for Mr Beesley said that the couple had originally no intention of living in the building, but changed their mind after a spate of burglaries in the area. So Mr Beesley altered plans to relocate the large barn door and built extra doors and lighting, which were never approved by the council.
In 2007 they tried to get certificate of lawfulness which would have allowed them to use the property as residential accommodation but planners objected and accused the couple of fraudulently building the home with the intention of living in it.
In April 2009, the High Court ordered their eviction, but the decision was overturned in January 2010. However, the Supreme Court reviewed the case in April 2011 and upheld the original judgment.
They ruled that Mr Beesley intended to deceive the council from the outset to exploit a legal loophole by secretly using the building as a residential home for four years.