A CLASSIC car collector has been told to get rid of his rusting “scrap” collection at a Wye Valley beauty spot farm and holiday let, which has reportedly numbered some 200 vehicles.

It’s not the first time Mark Dew of Doward Farm near Whitchurch has been told to take action over the cars, with enforcement orders dating back nearly a decade.

Some of the cars at Doward Farm which planning officials say should be removed.
Some of the cars at Doward Farm during previous council enforcement attempts (Herefordshire Council)

Neighbours have labelled the sight of the cars on fields near the “King Arthur’s Caves” heritage site, three miles from Monmouth, a “blot on the landscape”.

In the latest move, Herefordshire planners sent an enforcement notice on December 15 regarding “the siting and storage of old/scrap cars, vans and non-agricultural vehicles” at the farm.

This constituted “a material change of use”, from farmland to “mixed use”, without planning permission, for which there was “no evidence demonstrating an essential need”, the notice said.

A retrospective bid for planning permission for the use “would not receive officer support” given the sensitive Wye Valley National Landscape location, the notice added.

Some of the cars and a pile of rubbish at Doward farm
Some of the cars and a pile of rubbish at Doward farm (Herefordshire Council)

It gave Mr Dew 30 days from January 19 to “permanently remove the old/scrap cars, vans and non-agricultural vehicles from the land”, unless he were to first lodge an appeal against the notice.

It does not appear from the Planning Inspectorate website that such an appeal has been lodged.

This is not the first time such an attempt has been made to force Mr Dew to remove the vehicles.

An aerial view of Doward farm showing cars parked there
An aerial view of Doward farm showing cars parked there (Herefordshire Council)

In 2017, he overturned an enforcement notice ordering the removal of more than 30 ’old and scrap’ vehicles from his land, after the planning inspector ruled in his favour, saying the alleged exact location was ‘ambiguous’.

He claimed his car collection, started in the 1980s, including 90-year-old vintage motors and five Jaguar classic cars, was being stored in barns and around the farm with a view to opening a motoring museum.

The council then served a similar enforcement notice on him in 2019, at the time giving him six months to comply.

Mr Dew, who has also owned the Malt Shovel pub in Ruardean, appealed unsuccessfully against the notice, with a neighbour commenting at the time: “Mr Dew is a thoroughly decent chap, but he must accept that the current state of the farm is a blot on an otherwise beautiful and ancient landscape.”

But the council admitted the cars were still there in 2021 and it appears no resolution has been achieved to date.

Last June, BBC Radio Hereford and Worcester reported that Mr Dew intended to sell “his entire collection of almost 200 vintage and classic cars” dating from the 1920s to the 2000s, at an open-air auction at the farm.

Mr Dew was also involved with unsuccessful plans to convert the rundown Riverside Inn in Ross-on-Wye into housing, which was sold at auction two years ago after being repossessed.

In 2021, he was also ordered to demolish an ’unauthorised’ two-storey building put up on the site of a woodland sweet shop ruin in woodland off Coppice Road near Lower Lydbrook.

Attempts were made to contact Mr Dew.