Kate Middleton’s younger sister Pippa Matthews has been handed a setback over a car park at her family’s Berkshire estate.
Pippa and her husband, hedge fund manager James Matthews, have been told by West Berkshire Council to remove the car park at their £15.5million Barton Court estate in the village of Kintbury.
The couple bought the 145-acre property, formerly owned by designer Sir Terence Conran, in 2022. However, their plans for part of the estate have run into trouble after they laid around 400 square metres of hard standing on a former paddock without first securing planning permission.
The development has also upset local residents, who were reportedly shocked to find that a stretch of meadowland on the approach to their village had been turned into a private parking area for anglers visiting the estate’s fishing facilities.
Villagers raised their concerns with the council, arguing that the work had been carried out without any consultation. Planning inspectors later found that the car park was damaging the surrounding countryside.
Representatives for James and Pippa attempted to secure permission retrospectively through an application submitted in November last year. West Berkshire Council rejected the application in February. The estate then appealed, but a Government-appointed inspector dismissed the challenge in July, agreeing that the car park was out of keeping with its countryside surroundings.
Locals had claimed the path had been used by villagers for generations, with one resident telling The Times: “I taught my son to ride his bike on that path.”
The dispute left some residents unhappy, with one describing the atmosphere as carrying “a lot of ill will and residual anger”.
For some villagers, the latest ruling has brought back familiar frustrations, with one resident dismissing the development as “not very village-y.”