Overview

• Mark Jones began building the two-bedroom, £180,000 bungalow in his ex-wife’s Sutton Coldfield garden in March 2019 without planning permission after believing it fell under permitted development rules.
• Birmingham City Council rejected his planning applications twice and in February 2021 a Planning Inspector deemed the backland bungalow “alien” to the character of Walmley Ash Road.
• An enforcement notice served in November 2021 ordered the bungalow’s removal by March 2022, and the council later extended the deadline to the end of June 2025.
• Jones has lodged a pending application for a lawful development certificate to recast the structure as a permitted single-storey outbuilding and said he will market it as an annex if approved.
• The council is now pursuing court action for non-compliance with the enforcement notice even as it prepares to decide Jones’s certificate application.