The house is out of the barn

A long-running legal dispute in England apparently hasn't worked out in favor of a homeowner who lived in a house disguised as a hay barn in order to evade local planning laws.

He got a permit to build a barn in an area restricted to agricultural use, then built the windowless, three-bedroom structure in Hertfordshire in 2001 (parking farm equipment in front of it), and moved his family in. Later, he applied for a "certificate of lawfulness" to make it a legal abode after a statute of limitations related to land-planning violations had expired.

A legal fight ensued, and recently a court ruled against him: he might have to tear down the barn/house.

The judge commented that the home/barn owner's efforts to deceive were so extensive that it deserved its own category in planning law, according to the Daily Telegraph of London.

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