Derbyshire council to force rehoming of family's ponies after giving land away for new housing

A Bakewell family and their Shetland ponies are facing an uncertain future after Derbyshire Dales District Council decided to give away a field to build affordable housing, with a development next door already said to be causing major issues for the neighbourhood.

Briony and Matthew Marshall have bred the show ponies for the past 16 years on land off Yeld Close, rented from DDDC, and the animals are a central part of family life for their two primary school aged children.

So it came as a major shock when Briony read a report in this newspaper that the council intended to gift the site to Nottingham Community Housing Association for the construction of up to ten affordable homes.

Briony, who works as a memorial jeweller, said: “It’s a big blow to think we’re going to lose it but to find out like that was just another punch in the head. There was never even an email to say they were thinking of doing this.

“They’ve tried to make out they didn’t have our contact information when we’ve been a tenant of theirs for so many years.

“They’ve not been helpful or informative in any way. They don’t seem to give a monkey’s whether they hear our side of the story.

“We went to the meeting where it was decided and we weren’t allowed to speak and our councillor wasn’t allowed to read a letter we had prepared.”

DDDC declined to comment in response to questions from the Derbyshire Times.

The field is a short walk from the home the family has rented for the past eight years, paying £150 for an annual grazing licence.

That arrangement makes caring for the ponies - as many as eight depending on the time of year - more manageable than it might otherwise be.

Briony said: “We’re not sure whether we’ll be able to keep the ponies or how it will affect their day-to-day running.

“It’s something we do as a hobby, we sell a couple a year to pay for hay over the winter but there’s no profit. They’re just like big dogs, and we keep them for the love of it.

“With the field where it is now, it means in foaling season I don’t have to be out in the middle of nowhere in the pitch black. Without it we’d also have nowhere to keep our horse trailer.

“I live with post traumatic stress disorder and it’s really helped my mental health having the horses nearby, and for the kids it’s been somewhere to get off the roads and play.”

She added: “We’ve asked the council to help us find somewhere else but most farmers don’t like ponies on their land because they churn up the ground.”

Council reports note that the land has been provisionally allocated for development since 2002.

The land has been valued at £175,000 but DDDC has calculated that giving it away is more economical than directly subsidising the construction of affordable housing as it normally would to meet targets set by the government.

As it stands, no planning application has been submitted for the field but it is only a matter of time.

DDDC has said it hopes to begin the development in November 2027 and complete the build a year later.

Briony said: “We’re still in the dark about how long we have left. There’s not much we can do about moving until spring because we’ve got mares in foal so they can’t be shifted until April at the earliest.

“The council have said we can probably get an extension until June but we’ve had nothing in writing.”

When the plans are made more concrete, the application will be decided by the Peak District National Park Authority (PDNPA) and Briony hopes to muster public opposition.

She said: “We’d appreciate anything anyone can do to object as soon as the planning application goes in. We’re not going without a fight.”

The extreme shortage of affordable housing in the Dales might make some inclined to support the development.

A reported 58 households are currently in need of accommodation in Bakewell alone.

In September work began in the field next to Briony’s ponies on construction of 42 new homes - designated as affordable in perpetuity and restricted to people with a local connection - and the impact in the streets around Yeld Close has been hard to ignore.

Briony said: “Site access has been planned really poorly too. Our neighbours are being woken up early in the morning and asked to move their cars so the lorries can pass.

“People here have always parked on the street, and very few of us have driveways. Now everyone’s worried about their cars being damaged, parking on the pavements and being quoted thousands just for a dropped kerb.

“It’s causing so much disruption and chaos on all the surrounding roads and around Lady Manners School. It makes you wonder how emergency service vehicles will get up here when all the houses are built too.”

She added: “It’s all day every day during the week when I’m trying to work from home while the house shakes. It’s near impossible and no exaggeration to say the noise makes me feel physically ill.

“We’ve had 40 lorries a day for the last month removing contaminated soil, with road sweeper going all day behind them. This phase was only supposed to take two weeks.

“Work has been starting before 7am some days when officially it’s not allowed until 8am. The workers come along shouting, leaving their engines idling, starting the diggers up and revving them.

“There’s some respite on Saturday and Sunday at the moment, but that’s just enough time for my head to stop buzzing.”

PDNPA, the planning authority responsible for regulating work on site, did not comment in response to questions from the Derbyshire Times.

Briony said: “We’re already looking at moving house as well as the ponies. I don’t know how we’d adjust everything but we can’t take much more.

“I understand new homes have to be built but I’ve lived in the Peaks all my life, and I’ve never known building like this.

“It’s already hard enough to get a doctor’s appointment in Bakewell, my husband’s five-minute drive home from work sometimes takes 40 minutes

“Go anywhere in Derbyshire you see more and more houses going up, and some standing empty because they can’t sell. It just seems far too many.”