A COLLECTOR of old vehicles who was told in December to remove cars, vans and non-agricultural vehicles scattered around his Wye Valley farm has failed to comply with an enforcement order.

The notice gave Mark Dew until February 18 to permanently remove all the old vehicles from the land at Doward Farm near Symonds Yat West, which neighbours have labelled a “blot on the landscape”.

This is not the first time Herefordshire Council have tried forcing Mr Dew to remove the collection, having served similar enforcement notices as long ago as 2017.

This week, a council enforcement team spokesperson said: “We are reviewing our position before deciding on the next course of action.”

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.

While some of the cars have since been moved, there are a lot that still remain on site.

Mr Dew started his car collecting 40 years ago with the original intention of setting up a motor museum, and managed to fill up a barn and several fields with an assortment of vehicles.

The enforcement notice states that the siting and storage of old/scrap cars, vans and non-agricultural vehicles at the farm constitutes “a material change of use”, from farmland to mixed use, “without planning permission”.

Mr Dew was warned that a retrospective bid for planning permission would not receive officer support, given the sensitive location of the farm in the Wye Valley National Landscape.

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

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 at the time his car collection, started in the 1980s and 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 motor museum.

The council then served a similar enforcement notice on him in 2019, which Mr Dew, who has also owned the Malt Shovel pub in Ruardean, appealed unsuccessfully against.

A neighbour commented then: “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 post-Covid, Herefordshire Council admitted the cars were still there and no resolution has been achieved to date.

Mr Dew was also reportedly 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 sweet shop ruin in woodland off Coppice Road near Lower Lydbrook.