Fayed’s wife in High Court fight to stop building of crematorium

THE wife of Mohamed Fayed, the former Harrods owner, has launched a High Court bid to stop a new 12-acre funeral site being built on green-belt land near the couple’s Surrey mansion.

Heini Wathen-fayed, a former model and actress, is suing over plans to construct the site close to their 17th century Jacobean home, Barrow Green Court.

Mr Fayed, 93, has owned the Grade I listed mansion, near Oxted, Surrey, since the Seventies and his wife is now spearheading a High Court challenge aimed at overturning a Government Planning Inspector’s September 2021 decision to approve the crematorium project on the basis of a compelling local need.

Mrs Wathen-fayed and Mr Fayed have a portfolio of properties which includes a Scottish castle and estate, New York apartments, and buildings overlooking Hyde Park.

The 67-year-old said she is fighting the case to safeguard the local environment from development and preserve the “peaceful” 12-acre site.

Horizon Cremation Ltd lodged an application for planning permission with Tandridge district council.

Permission was initially refused in October 2020, but Horizon successfully appealed in September 2021. The dispute has reached the High Court as Mrs Wathen-fayed – spearheading local objectors, the Oxted and Limpsfield Residents’ Group – takes on the Government to try to kill off the scheme.

Outside the court hearing last week Horizon’s director, Stephen Byfield, estimated that the funeral company had already spent around £500,000 fighting to get the green light for the crematorium.

Lawyers for Ms Wathen-fayed and other campaigners point out that the land is in the protected green belt and on the edge of an “area of outstanding beauty”.

Speaking outside court, Mrs Wathen-fayed said the need to preserve countryside outweighs the need for a new crematorium in the area.

“We moved there because of the green belt and local residents want to keep it like that,” she said.

The planning inspector who ruled in favour of the scheme, Jonathan Price, said it would do only “moderate harm” to the area’s rural character and that existing funeral sites around Tandridge are all functioning “beyond their practical capacity”, he found.

Judge Timothy Mould QC has reserved his decision in the case, to be given at a later date, yet to be set.

‘We moved there because of the green belt and local residents want to keep it like that’