Copyright yahoo
Martin Clunes has failed in his bid to prevent a permanent travellers’ site being built near his country home. The Doc Martin actor has spent three years attempting to stop a temporary woodland encampment on the edge of his Dorset farm becoming a site for travellers. Clunes has owned the 130-acre hilltop farm since 2007, after buying it for £3m from garden designer Georgia Langton. Langton’s son, Theo Langton, and his partner, Ruth McGill, have lived in a mobile home for 25 years on the land they own in the village of Meerhay, near Beaminster, next to the farm’s private driveway. In 2015, the council granted the couple a five-year temporary licence to live there while they looked for an alternative traveller site. The pair have lived there illegally in their 45ft by 16ft mobile home since that licence expired in 2020. Instead of moving, they applied for planning permission to continue living there permanently. Proposals for the site were recommended for approval by officers at Dorset council in 2023. Clunes and other residents objected to the plans, claiming the site was at risk of surface water flooding from runoff. A decision on the site was deferred after the council requested a flood risk assessment be conducted on the suitability of the site. Now the assessment has concluded that any risk of surface water flooding was not great enough during the 100-year estimated “lifetime” of the development. It states: “No specific flood risk management measures are required. The proposed development will have no impact on the flood risk elsewhere.” Planning approval likely The case is now set to return to the council committee for a final decision to be made on the plan, with approval likely. Clunes and his wife previously made a submission to the committee claiming that their current residence on the site did not meet the definition of a mobile home. The actor also suggested that Mr Langton and Ms McGill should not be considered as “New Age Travellers”. An officer’s report to the committee said: “It is very clear they follow and are a part of the New Age Traveller community and have been for many years. “Although they are not ethnic gypsies, I am more than satisfied they are New Age Travellers and have a lot of friends and support in the new Traveller community.” In response, Clunes wrote: “It cannot be concluded that the applicants are persons of nomadic habit of life due to them visiting music and other festivals each year to sell items and help set them up. “This would mean that many, if not all, stallholders at such festivals, as well as the roadies who travel with the festival organisers, retailers and bands would be classed as gypsies and travellers within the planning definition, which clearly is not the case.” The application is for continued use of land as a private residential Traveller site for “sole use of the applicants and family” and to include the use of a barn as a workshop, along with a mobile home, a touring caravan and a van to be based on the site.
