Overview
- Entrepreneur James Perkins, who bought the fire-damaged Grade I-listed Parnham House in 2020, proposes enabling development to fund a £25 million restoration.
- Planning documents describe up to 82 homes and two visitor lodges on the estate, with campaigners highlighting a cluster of about a dozen townhouses and a new road bridge over the River Brit.
- Conservationists say Millground Meadow hosts a rare population of albino badgers, including Alberto first rescued in 2015, and warn construction would destroy protected habitat.
- Estate representative Ed Grant says specialist surveys show zero evidence of badgers within 30 metres of the works and notes the 2015 albino badger sighting was not on the estate and that the animal died.
- Planning agents argue the housing is required to close a funding gap and has been designed with Poundbury-inspired architecture and siting intended to limit impacts on the historic house’s setting, with the proposals now in public contention and no decision reported.