A businessman in Christchurch, Dorset, has clashed with his neighbours after building a large garden room to house a golf simulator without first notifying the local council. Pete Bransky, who runs a printing business called Colour Copier, constructed the 7m-wide structure between January and March, but neighbours say it is far bigger than initial plans indicated and sits too close to their boundaries, raising fire safety concerns.

Neighbours have disputed Mr Bransky's figures, with one measuring the building's distance from his fence at less than half the 1.1m gap claimed in planning documents, while Mr Bransky himself has given conflicting distances in different submissions ranging from 0.6m to 1.1m. The structure's height has also grown in his accounts, from an initial 2.5m to an admitted 4.2m at its peak, and his retrospective planning application, first filed in March and withdrawn after queries about protecting neighbouring trees, was resubmitted in July and remains open for public comment.