A FORMER Exmoor National Park Authority (ENPA) forestry and rights of way supervisor has been living in a stone barn in an isolated wood for nearly six years.

Now, Paul Iles, who worked for ENPA for 15 years until taking redundancy, wants the authority to grant a ‘certificate of lawfulness’ to regularise the situation in planning law.

Mr Iles explained in a letter to the park authority how he had moved into Sloecombe Barn, north of Cowbridge, near Timberscombe, early in 2019 and converted the barn into a one-bedroom home.

Mr Iles said he used windblown and diseased trees for some of the material and fitted a compost toilet and a gas water heater for a shower.

He took water from a spring and also harvested rainwater, and had planted more than 400 trees, most of which were from seed from trees already growing in Sloecombe.

Mr Iles, who is also a keen chainsaw carver, said he had been managing the landscape and conserving wildlife around his home in accordance with a countryside stewardship agreement.

The barn and the land managed by Mr Iles is owned by David Gurnett, who is also a former ENPA employee.

Mr Gurnett applied for a certificate of lawful use permitting the conversion to residential in August, 2023, four months after the planning breach would have become immune from enforcement action because of a four-year rule.

He said he started helping Mr Iles to convert the barn in January, 2019, and it had been occupied since April that year, meaning the four years was reached in April, 2023.

Mr Gurnett said his family purchased Sloecombe in 1989, since when cattle had been kept in the valley and the flora and fauna had attracted county wildlife and higher level stewardship designations.

He said Sloecombe Barn was built to house heavy horses and was located at the head of the valley with access by foot or by vehicle via legal rights of way.

Mr Gurnett said Mr Iles had worked for him since 2014 and was increasingly taking more responsibility for Sloecombe while he ran a similar 700-acre regenerative farming project in Wales.