Couple who duped council planners by disguising their house as a GARAGE and living in it for four years are ordered to tear it down 

• Jackie Shearsby, 55, and Peter Hickinbotham, 68, converted property in garden
• Two-bed house features a garage door at the front with a porch area at the back
• Couple have been ordered to tear it down after being accused of concealing it

A couple have been ordered to tear down a property they allegedly attempted to disguise as a garage. 

Jackie Shearsby, 55, and Peter Hickinbotham, 68, converted the garage in their garden into a two-bed bungalow after buying a crumbling house only fit for demolition in Long Itchington, Warwickshire.

The pair lived in it for more than four years from April 2012 until they were rumbled when they contacted council planners themselves last December.

On Friday the couple were ordered to pay Stratford-on-Avon District Council £7,145.65 in court costs. 

Peter Hickinbotham defended his decision to hide his home inside a garage to dodge planning laws and vowed to appeal the court decision.

Speaking from his illegal two-bedroom bungalow he said: 'I'm very disappointed.

'I thought I would have got it through planning but they've come up with some cock-and-bull story about concealment.

'I've been there over five years now and I had to go to court and they issued an enforcement order against me which hasn't come out yet.

'When that comes out the next step is you can appeal against the enforcement.

'The way it's gone I don't think I'm going to stand much of a chance.

'I'll still appeal because it doesn't cost you anything, just the cost of getting some good words to fill the forms in so it's a little bit on my side.

'I cannot see it making much difference. The government say after four years you can apply for full planning so after four and a half years I applied.

'They came out and looked at the place and wanted more time to get the paperwork together.

'It came back I was concealing it. I'd done everything the law or government says I have to do, been there the time period, bills to prove that.

'They looked outside saying the conifers are hiding it, the gates and fence are hiding it but they'd been there for 30 years.

'Obviously trees grow, they were planted in 2009. They were three years old when they were at six foot, so that part of concealment is bull.

'They said how could you live like this in dark rooms - there are a couple of windows, okay.

'But that doesn't bother us, in the summer you open the doors to let the light in but I wanted to get the four-year period out of the way before I applied.

'If you get it - which I thought I would - you can put whatever windows you want in.

'They said I don't pay council tax. I knew I'd always got to pay that, that was in back of my mind.

'I've abided by the rules as far as the time period and not surrounded it by veils.'

Nuneaton Magistrates Court also made an enforcement order against the couple forcing them to convert the building back to a garage.

Magistrates heard the couple made a retrospective application on December 15 last year for permission to turn the garage into a 'habitable residential dwelling.'

The pair admitted they converted the property in June 2011 and moved in full-time in April 2012.

The court ruled they had breached planning laws, adding that there had been a 'deliberate concealment'.

Councillor Simon Lawton, Chairman of the Regulatory Committee said: 'Planning regulations are there to protect against unauthorised development.

'The council will consider this Court process to prevent breaches becoming immune from enforcement action where a breach has been deliberately concealed to avoid enforcement action.'