The super-rich set up camp in the British countryside

Britain’s most desirable beauty spots face a triple threat: super-rich Americans fleeing Donald Trump’s US, the allure of new tax breaks for foreigners and a special planning exemption for unique projects dubbed “the Grand Designs” clause. Beyoncé Knowles, Stella McCartney and Cate Blanchett are among an influx of wealthy international buyers who have recently commissioned architects to create unique countryside homes for their families.

While the government’s “build, baby, build” plan to create housing for the masses is proceeding at the speed of thick concrete, new homes for the super-rich are finding favour with planning authorities. Swimming pools, spas, gyms, games rooms and cinemas come as standard on these blueprints, which are increasingly receiving planning approval, according to firms such as Jonathan Hendry Architects and Studio Bark.

The latter claims to have secured 13 approvals on “challenging rural sites”, using the special Grand Designs clause for English projects, which was named after the Channel 4 TV show and originally drafted to allow the refurbishment of country houses. The high-end firm Hawkes Architecture says it has successfully designed 11 properties for protected landscapes. Permission for a new-build can often be gained this way as long as there is evidence of design quality, including sustainability features and sensitive landscaping schemes. This paragraph 84 provision of the National Planning Policy Framework allows for new “architecturally important buildings” to be built in places where local planning authorities would otherwise have objected, even in an official area of outstanding national beauty.

A number of high-profile American celebrities have moved to Britain in recent years. Domestic politics may have added to the appeal of making a permanent family home across the pond, but so did the introduction last April of a four-year foreign income and gains regime, instead of the old remittance tax base for non-doms. This means a new UK resident can choose to pay no tax on foreign income for the first four years. A replacement for the UK’s scrapped “golden” investor visa is also thought to be on the way and would be a fresh lure for big industry players in AI, clean energy or life sciences.

Knowles and her husband, the rapper Jay-Z, hoped to buy a £7.5m, 58-acre site in the Cotswolds, near Wigginton, where they were going to construct a seven-bedroom property suspended over a lake. Concerns about flooding are believed to have deterred the couple, but initial permission for a large-scale development was granted by Cherwell district council under a “special exemption” clause.

The Cotswolds remains one of the most popular destinations for wealthy incomers, with Ellen DeGeneres and her wife Portia de Rossi renovating a farmhouse, and Kate Moss and Victoria and David Beckham already established residents. Liam Gallagher was also recently reported to have bought a £4m mansion on a five-acre site near Cirencester that was once owned by the former Arsenal and England footballer Tony Adams.

Cornwall, where Blanchett and her husband, the playwright Andrew Upton, are developing a five-bedroom property overlooking the sea at Mawgan Porth, is now locally nicknamed “Hollywood-on-Sea”. Actors Jason Statham and Jamie Dornan live in the neighbourhood. Latest plans for the garden and surrounding landscape were submitted to Cornwall council at the beginning of the year and include the “mass planting” of olearia bushes, sea thrift and ornamental grasses around a “scattering of Cornish boulders”.Despite more than 60 local objections, fashion designer McCartney and her husband last week received permission to go ahead with their glass-fronted clifftop “for ever home” in the Highlands of Scotland, designed for them by Brown & Brown.

Objections to McCartney’s approved Scottish home on Commando Rock, perched above a sea loch west of Fort William, mostly concerned its size, modern design and the possible impact on wildlife. Ahead of last week’s decision by the Highland council’s planning committee, the daughter of the former Beatle Sir Paul McCartney and her husband, Alasdhair Willis, a creative director at Adidas, issued a statement saying that the energy-efficient building they plan would be camouflaged by its turfed roof. “Unlike many of the homes in the area, this is not a holiday home; it is a house that the family will live in, our for ever home,” they said.

Photograph by Squirrel/Backgrid UK