Demolition work begins on Captain Tom Moore's daughter's illegal luxury spa

30 January 2024 , 10:20

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Workers from a scaffolding company put up poles at the home of Hannah Ingram-Moore (Image: PA)

A specialist team arrived at the home of Captain Sir Tom Moore's daughter today to start the demolition of a luxury spa that was built without permission.

A flatbed truck arrived at the property in Marston Moretaine in Bedfordshire on Tuesday morning and drove into the grounds through a gate off a residential street at the rear of the plot. Hannah Ingram-Moore and her husband Colin were instructed to pull down the unauthorised £200,000 building after a council enforcement. Last week workmen were seen removing boxes and artwork from the building following a November ruling demanding the spa be demolished within three months. Today, a low-loader lorry was seen entering the back garden of their home for scaffolding to be erected. A workman said: “We are putting scaffolding up today. The pool will be removed before the building is knocked down on Monday.”

Hannah Ingram-Moore in the garden on Thursday as their luxury spa gets emptied (Jeremy Selwyn)

Planning permission had been granted for an L-shaped building in the grounds of the family home but the planning authority refused a subsequent retrospective application in 2022 for a larger C-shaped building containing a spa pool. In August 2021 they had been granted permission to build a Captain Tom Foundation Building, to house the covid hero’s memorabilia. Sir Tom, who was knighted by the late Queen, raised £38 million for NHS charities by completing 100 sponsored laps of the garden of the home during the pandemic in 2020.

A vehicle from Apex scaffolding and roofing company drives into the rear of the grounds for demolition (PA)

The World War veteran died in January 2021 aged 100. The couple used the foundation’s name on their first set of plans. However, it was not used on a retrospective application for a larger building with a spa pool. The council refused the retrospective planning permission for the revised plans in November 2022 and local residents signed a petition calling the structure "ugly, featureless, overbearing, oversized and completely out of character".

Hannah Ingram-Moore, the daughter of the late Captain Sir Tom Moore, and her husband outside her property at Marston Moretaine, Bedfordshire (PA)

In July last year, Central Bedfordshire Council issued an enforcement notice requiring the demolition of the "now-unauthorised building” and said it was subject to an appeal to the Planning Inspectorate. During a hearing in October, chartered surveyor James Paynter, for the appellants, said the spa pool had “the opportunity to offer rehabilitation sessions for elderly people in the area”. But this was swiftly rejected with inspector Diane Fleming ruling that the “scale and massing” of the building had resulted in harm to the grade II-listed Old Rectory – the family’s home.

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A birds eye view of the property (James Linsell-Clark / SWNS)

Not the first time the family had been mired in controversy, after Ingram-Moore and her husband became trustees of the Captain Tom Foundation in February 2021, the same month her father died. A year later, the Charity Commission announced it would be reviewing the accounts of the Captain Tom Foundation after it gave grants of £160,000 to four charities in its first year but paid out more than £162,000 in management costs in the same period. Reimbursement costs were also paid to Club Nook Limited, a company run by Ingram-Moore set up shortly before the charity. In June 2022, the commission said it had launched an inquiry into the foundation over concerns Captain Tom's family may have profited from using his name. In October 2023, Ingram-Moore told TalkTV that her family kept £800,000 in profits from Captain Tom's three books because it was "what he wanted".

Rachel Hagan