Tess and Vernon’s dream home plan is Strictly a no-no

They are the highestearning celebrity TV presenting couple in the country, appearing on many well-known programmes. But despite their massive popular appeal, I’m A Celebrity runner-up Vernon Kay and wife Tess Daly ran into a volley of objections from neighbours when they tried to build their dream country house.

The couple and their two daughters, Phoebe and Amber, currently live in an enviable six-bedroom house in Buckinghamshire, with a swimming pool, gym and two Shetland ponies, honey and Willow.

however, Vernon and Strictly star Tess shelled out more than £1.5million for a redbrick house nearby in December 2018 — then applied for permission to demolish it and replace it with a new home.

Now, despite receiving planning permission for their grand design, they have decided it’s not worth the hassle, and have sold up — for £1.7 million. They had enlisted Urban Curve Architecture, a firm specialising in designing ‘bespoke, one-off houses’ and submitted plans for a ‘sustainable and energyefficient family dwelling’.

The new build, with its ‘timber effect front door’ and windows ‘in grey aluminium frames’ would have been four storeys, yet with ‘the appearance of a two-storey dwelling’. But the plan didn’t receive good marks from the judges — their neighbours. ‘The basement extension will require significant ground works into the chalk hillside,’ wrote one, Audrey Lambert, ‘requir[ing] significant removal of existing trees and shrubbery . . . which screen the neighbouring properties’.

It would also, she said, affect wildlife, particularly badgers.

‘The Badger Protection Act of 1992 makes it illegal to “intentionally or recklessly damage or destroy a badger sett, or obstruct access to it”.’

And neighbour David Overton alleged: ‘Redevelopment work commenced on . . . the property prior to planning consent . . . This should not be acceptable.’

Kay and Daly declined to make a comment.