Widow who bought fly-tipped wasteland and transformed it into a farm for schoolchildren is ordered to tear it all down by jobsworth council
A widow who spent two years transforming a fly-tipped patch of wasteland in Sidlesham, West Sussex into a smallholding used by local schoolchildren has been ordered to dismantle it after losing a planning appeal. Tara Dexter, 57, bought the £57,000 plot while grieving the sudden death of her partner Gary from brain cancer, turning it into a haven for pigs, chickens, peacocks and wildlife, and says the project helped her cope with her loss. Chichester District Council objected to a container and sheds on the site, ruling they breached countryside planning rules, and rejected her retrospective planning application.
Ms Dexter's subsequent appeal to the Planning Inspectorate has failed, leaving her with four months to remove the structures from her land. She notes the irony that the council had previously raised no objection to the container and sheds and even awarded her almost £3,000 in grants to plant hedgerows and trees, while surrounding plots including a burnt-out barn and long-standing fly-tipping have gone unaddressed. Local schoolchildren and disabled visitors have used the site, including a willow igloo she built, and she says she is devastated at the prospect of the land reverting to a dumping ground.
- Widow ordered to tear down smallholding built on former fly-tipped land
- Chichester council rejected retrospective planning permission for sheds
- Planning Inspectorate appeal failed; she has four months to comply
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Tara Dexter, 57, is a widow from Sidlesham in West Sussex who bought a run-down, fly-tipped plot of land for £57,000 after her partner Gary died suddenly of brain cancer. Over two years she cleared the site and turned it into a smallholding with pigs, chickens, peacocks and other wildlife, which local schoolchildren and disabled visitors have since used to learn about animals and nature.
The dispute centres on a shipping container and sheds she put on the land, which Chichester District Council says break planning rules protecting the countryside. The council rejected her retrospective application to keep them, and the Planning Inspectorate, an independent body that decides planning appeals in England, has now turned down her challenge, meaning she must remove the structures within four months.
The case has drawn attention partly because of the contrast between Ms Dexter's personal story of turning a neglected site into a community resource and the council's stricter approach to unauthorised buildings on countryside land, even as she says other problem sites nearby, such as fly-tipping and a derelict barn, have not been dealt with in the same way.
Both sides, in good faith
The strongest fair case each way — we don't pick a winner.
The case for
Supporters of Ms Dexter argue that planning decisions should weigh genuine public benefit and individual circumstance, not just technical breaches. They point out that a fly-tipped eyesore was turned into an educational resource used by schoolchildren and disabled visitors, built while she was grieving, and that the council's earlier silence on the structures and its grant funding for hedgerows suggest a degree of prior tacit acceptance. Given neighbouring unresolved breaches, such as a burnt-out barn and ongoing fly-tipping, they see the enforcement action as disproportionate and inconsistently applied against someone who has plainly improved the land.
The case against
Supporters of the council's position argue that countryside planning rules exist precisely to prevent unauthorised structures accumulating in protected rural areas, and that officers and the independent Planning Inspectorate must apply them consistently regardless of how sympathetic an individual case appears. Allowing retrospective permission on compassionate grounds risks setting a precedent that undermines fairness to landowners who sought consent beforehand, and unrelated breaches elsewhere are separate enforcement matters that do not excuse a new one. On this view, rules protecting the countryside only function if they are upheld even when doing so produces a difficult outcome for a sympathetic applicant.