A grandmother living off-grid has won a breakthrough after spending more than £125,000 on legal fees to save her £59,000 eco-cabin from being demolished.
Brigid Eakins, 70, feared being left homeless after officials ordered her to take down the luxury wooden lodge that she built herself in 2014 in Worcestershire.
The Cambridge University examiner spent most of her life savings constructing the cabin from natural materials enabling her to live off-grid.
She applied for planning permission before building it – but was initially told that was not necessary because a mobile home was already on the site in the hamlet of St Michaels, near Tenbury Wells.
But six years after her cabin was erected, Herefordshire County Council performed a U-turn after receiving four complaints from neighbours.
Officials told Ms Eakins the wooden structure breached planning regulations, saying it was bigger than the mobile home it had replaced.
The local authority ordered the divorced languages teacher to knock down her home by January 2022.
She appealed the enforcement notice – and after years of legal wrangling has finally secured a minor victory in a bid to keep the cabin.
She has been given permission to separate the roof from the walls – an alteration that could change the cabin’s legal definition.
Despite being built from wood, technically the cabin could be classed as a ‘caravan’ because it could be separated into two sections.
Council planners approved the alterations and awarded her a Certificate of Lawful Use or Development to carry out the work.
Ms Eakins has since applied to the council again to reclassify the cabin – a decision which could be pivotal because different planning rules apply to caravans.
Despite her latest progress to potentially go ahead with alterations, Ms Eakins says she still faces an uphill struggle to overturn the enforcement notice.
She said: ‘I own the land and all I wanted to do was build an environmentally-friendly cabin for myself and my family to enjoy.
‘I’m an old hippy – I just want to sit in my cabin and watch the finches and weasels and count the trees.
‘At the moment I cannot sell the cabin or the land because the enforcement notice is still in place.
‘I don’t want my family to inherit all of this mess, so I have to keep fighting.’
Ms Eakins built the cabin at the edge of her 2.4-acre field previously used by her for rearing horses and sheep.
She lived off-grid in the open-plan eco-cabin measuring 90ft x 50ft, using a generator and inverter to generate electricity for heating and Wi-Fi.
She installed a septic tank at the back of the cabin, surrounded by hundreds of trees which she planted herself.
Ms Eakins, who has three grown-up children and two grandchildren, built the cabin to replace a mobile home on the land.
She said: ‘I thought I had permission to build the cabin – I did build it and then it all kicked off.
‘I only ever wanted to live in something environmentally friendly.’
Ms Eakins estimates the council spent at least £75,000 of taxpayers’ cash on the bitter dispute, while she spent more than twice the cost of the cabin.
She added: ‘This has been going on for years and has cost me at least £125,000 in legal fees – not to mention the cost of the cabin, so the total is more than £200,000.
‘I just wanted to replace the existing mobile home where I had been living for two years.
‘I built it exactly the same as it looks in the plans I submitted in 2013. It is absolutely identical.
‘The cabin itself cost £59,000 to build while the landscaping to make the land level cost several thousand pounds. A well, generator, an oil tank to run it and a septic tank also cost a further £5,000.’
At the time, Herefordshire County Council defended the decision to order Brigid to demolish the cabin.
A spokesperson said: ‘The structure built in this location far exceeds the scope of the original plans, and has prompted several complaints from the local community.
‘The council issued an enforcement notice for the unauthorised development.’
Commenting on the latest ruling, a council spokesperson said: ‘The application is currently being considered and therefore we are unable to comment at this time.’
