Sue Barker wins fight to raise roof... so husband stops bashing his head!
SUE Barker has won a fight to raise the roof of her £1million house – so her husband stops banging his head on the ceiling.
The TV presenter and former tennis star was given planning consent to alter the Cotswolds village property by 5ft so her husband did not have to crouch in the master bedroom.
The 61-year-old presenter faced complaints from neighbours who said the plan would spoil the area and block out sunlight. But planners ruled the effect on the area would be negligible.
Miss Barker’s husband Lance Tankard said he once ‘knocked himself clean out’ and had twice cut his head on ‘ pinch points’ at the rear of the property.
In a letter to Tewkesbury Council, the former police offer and landscape gardener said: ‘There are several pinch points within this area that are downright dangerous where the valleys meet to the rear. I can only place a small chest of drawers into these areas and then limbo up towards them if I want to open a drawer.’
The council was also asked to grant retrospective permission for an extension to the property.
Miss Barker, who won the 1976 French Open and now presents Wimbledon on the BBC, bought the property in Gloucestershire with her husband in 2007. Photographs of the 5ft4in former world number three and her husband show he is considerably taller. His agent said in the submission to the borough council: ‘The applicant is tall and after many years his head still has an affinity for the low valley blades of the roof.’ But Sir Richard Tucker, who lives next door, said a window in the plans to which he objected was ‘a gross intrusion into the privacy of my garden for which there has not been, and cannot be, any justification’. Tewkesbury Council gave the go- ahead and allowed the couple to keep an extension which was built without planning consent.