Rishi Sunak has put in a planning application to build a fence around his constituency home, two months after Greenpeace activists staged a protest on his roof.
Five people were arrested over the incident in August, when campaigners scaled the North Yorkshire manor house and draped it in black fabric in protest at government plans to grant more than 100 new licences for oil and gas extraction in the North Sea.
The prime minister was on holiday with his wife and children at the time, but both Tory and Labour MPs criticised the targeting of his private home, while an ex-police chief branded it a “major security breach”.
However, Areeba Hamid, co-executive director of Greenpeace, told Sky News it was a “proportionate response to a disastrous decision” amid a climate crisis, and it would not have gone ahead had Mr Sunak been at home.
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Now, the prime minister has submitted an application to erect a 165ft long and 1.1m high timber post and rail fence around the property in order to “provide a simple visual and modest physical barrier to discourage incursion onto the residential property”.
The application, submitted on 11 October – the last day of the Conservative Party’s annual conference – said: “It is considered that the proposal gives rise to no perceivable harm in heritage terms or from a wider planning perspective and planning permission should be duly granted.”
And it called for a “prompt decision given the simplicity of the proposals and site circumstances”.
Sky News has contacted Number 10 to see if Mr Sunak will be paying for the fence himself or if the cost will come from the public purse.
