Former Starbucks franchise owner Mark Hepburn must dig up his tennis court and demolish a home gym after losing a planning appeal in Hampshire.
Hepburn, 54, has six months to rip out the court, a gym in timber huts, a bar, and a television room from agricultural land behind his six-bedroom home in Durley. A railway carriage can stay. Everything else must go.
The order landed after planning inspector Robert Hitchcock upheld Winchester City Council’s refusal to treat the field as residential garden and dismissed nearly all of Hepburn’s appeal. The Daily Mail reported the inspector found the works changed a largely undeveloped field into something with a clear residential footprint, and harmed the rural character of the area.
Hepburn bought the Durley property in December 2017 for £740,000. Until last year he owned 23.5 Degrees, the company that ran 110 Starbucks coffee franchises across the United Kingdom.
He told the planning process the house itself “wasn’t the nicest,” but the outdoor space sold the family on it.
Hepburn said:
"With a young family that is important. We spent more time viewing the garden than the house."
The family kept a herd of alpacas on the back land as pets. He described that as a long-held wish.
Hepburn said:
"Our dream was to own alpacas, they eat the grass and they are inquisitive, they come up and approach you."
He and a previous owner submitted statutory declarations claiming garden use stretching back as far as 1988, dog walking, rope swings, and ordinary domestic life rather than farming. Hepburn argued the land was already an “extensive garden,” not working agriculture.
In 2021, Winchester City Council asked him to apply for a lawful development certificate. That is the formal paper showing land has already been in continuous residential garden use long enough, here, ten or more years, that enforcement should not bite.
Hepburn filed in May 2023. Two months later the council refused. Officials did not accept that the field had been a garden without a break for the required decade. They pointed to contrary signs of agricultural and pasture use in recent years.
After the refusal, in late 2023, he put up a bar and gym in timber huts and a television room. The following year he added a tennis and netball court. He maintained the additions fell under permitted development rights, the category of smaller works that often do not need full planning permission.
Neighbours objected. The council pressed enforcement. Hepburn appealed. A planning inquiry sat in Winchester in January last year, and he gave evidence.
Hitchcock sided with the council on the core fight. He found insufficient evidence of continuous garden use for ten-plus years and noted contrary information pointing back toward agriculture. He dismissed the appeal on the residential conversion and the new structures. Only the railway carriage won immunity as operational development already past the enforcement window.
The inspector’s reasoning turned on what the field had become.
Planning inspector Robert Hitchcock wrote:
"The character of the land has therefore changed from that of a largely undeveloped medium-sized field parcel to one where a residential use forms a significant component."
He went further on the harm.
Hitchcock wrote:
"In my judgement, that change erodes the rural character of the predominantly undeveloped field and diminishes the relationship between the surrounding countryside and the established residential development."
Domestic activity, lighting, and residential clutter, he said, pushed into a setting that had been relatively tranquil. The result, in his words, was an “unacceptable effect on the rural character of the area,” in conflict with the prevailing landscape and causing clear harm. Six months were set for removal of the court and the other development, carriage excepted.
Cllr Jackie Porter of Winchester City Council welcomed the outcome and credited years of work by the enforcement team.
Cllr Jackie Porter said:
"It's reassuring that the Inspector's decision supports our position and confirms that our enforcement action was right and justified."
She added that planning enforcement exists to keep development appropriate for the district and tied to the proper process, and that the council would keep working with the landowner to meet the inspector’s timetable.
Hepburn’s camp had cast the back land as family garden and pet pasture, backed by declarations and a belief that the huts and court sat inside permitted rights. The inspector and council read the same ground as agricultural field turned residential compound without the proof the law requires. That conflict is now settled on the council’s terms. The tennis court, gym, bar, and TV room have a deadline. The railway carriage does not.
Money, franchises, and a polished garden story do not rewrite the map. When the rules say agricultural land stays agricultural until the proof is there, even a Starbucks fortune has to dig.
