A businessman who spent £300,000 turning an abandoned Lake District waterworks into a holiday home has been told he cannot legally live in it after furious locals won a bitter planning war. 

Mike Brett, 62, bought The Filter House, a stone building tucked away in the remote Hayeswater Gill Valley in 2020, hoping to transform it into a rural bolthole he could use himself and rent out to tourists. 

The entrepreneur, originally from London, spent £70,000 on access alone to the former 1920s filtration unit, which sits in a dramatic valley around a mile from the nearest village of Hartsop. 

He had planned to share the ‘magical location’ with others – initially advertising the space online for up to ten people to stay. 

But his proposals quickly became a flashpoint in the Lakes’ growing row over second homes and holiday lets, amid fears wealthy outsiders are hollowing out rural communities and turning beauty spots into tourist playgrounds. 

The National Trust said the scheme risked having a ‘gentrifying effect’, while the local parish council accused Mr Brett of trying to force ‘an unwanted, unneeded and inappropriate holiday home into a remote and sensitive location’. 

One neighbour railed in a planning objection of the ‘strength of local feeling’, while another said: ‘We have never and will never support its use as a holiday let.’ 

A bitter six-year planning saga – during which two other planning applications were submitted and rejected – came to a head this month when Mr Brett lost an appeal against over whether the building could legally be used as a holiday home. 

Mark Brett spent £70,000 on access alone to the former 1920s filtration unit, which sits in a dramatic valley around a mile from the nearest village of Hartsop

Mr Brett bought The Filter House in 2020, hoping to transform it into a rural bolthole he could use himself and rent out to tourists.

The independent Planning Inspectorate backed the Lake District National Park authority’s ruling that the former filter unit could not be classed as a lawful dwelling because it lacked ‘the facilities for day to day living’. 

The decision means that Mr Brett cannot legally reside in the property and faces the prospect of council enforcement action if he does so. 

Yet he insisted he will carry on using the bolthole himself, telling the Daily Mail: ‘How are they going to stop me from using it as my holiday home? 

‘Loads of people, loads of my friends have stayed there and used it in the last five years. 

‘If they want to serve a stop notice on me, that’d be great fun, because I’d take them straight to court.’ 

Mr Brett has claimed the building had been used as holiday accommodation for 15 years, including by a previous owner who bought it from United Utilities in 2008. 

But planning officers said he had failed to prove the building had been in continuous use as a holiday home for the four-year period needed to make it lawful. 

The ruling has delighted objectors, who claimed the scheme would bring traffic, light pollution and ‘domestication’ to one of the Lake District’s quietest valleys. 

Patterdale Parish Council claimed the proposed holiday home would ‘benefit nobody but the applicant’ and warned that granting it could set a ‘dangerous precedent that anyone can buy a disused building in the Lake District National Park and do whatever they like with it’. 

The council claimed Mr Brett had openly admitted staying at the property and allowing friends to do so ‘in brazen contravention’ of earlier planning decisions. 

Local resident Ben Whitmore said in an objection to an earlier refused planning application to use the facility as holiday accommodation: ‘This building is in an unspoilt quiet valley where there are no other buildings. 

‘Any developed building in this landscape would certainly detract from this valley and from the views from the many surrounding peaks. 

‘Whilst the simple building is there already, there will a huge level of disturbance in such an isolated peaceful area. 

‘The very fact that cars will be going up high into the valley seems a huge unnecessary disturbance. 

‘A holiday house for eight or more people and any day visitors or helpers/cleaners would have several cars moving up and down each day plus deliveries of groceries and parcels. 

‘All this would add up to the proposed development being intrusive.’ 

Mr Brett said he believed planners were worried about setting a precedent for remote buildings in the Lakes being used as accommodation. 

However, he insisted that he and his wife would continue to use the facility and blamed ‘one person in the valley who decided to put a campaign together’. 

Mr Brett’s proposals quickly became a flashpoint in the Lakes’ growing row over second homes and holiday lets

Mr Brett said: ‘One person took offence because apparently he walks up the path on the other side of the valley to go fishing. 

‘And he didn’t want lights on in the building. But it’s had electricity and lights on in the building forever since it was built.’ 

Planning Inspector Zoe Franks concluded in her ruling that The Filter House did not have the characteristics of what could be described as a home. 

She said: ‘The council’s refusal to grant a certificate of lawful use for the use of the Filter House as a dwelling in the form of a holiday home is well-founded and the appeal should fail.’