Kate’s Sister Pippa Ordered to Tear Up Her Private Car Park in Rural Berkshire

Pippa Matthews, sister of the Princess of Wales, has been ordered to remove a car park she built at her country home in West Berkshire after the local council ruled it was too intrusive for the rural setting.

West Berkshire Council refused to grant retrospective planning permission for the hardstanding car park, saying it simply did not fit in with the surrounding countryside. The decision means Pippa and her husband James Matthews will have to dig it up and restore the land to its original condition.

The couple live at their estate in the village of Bucklebury, the same Berkshire village where Pippa and Kate grew up and where the Middleton family have long been based. It is a quiet, largely agricultural area, and the council made clear that a formal car park was not the kind of development that belongs there.

Planning rows over rural properties are nothing unusual, but when the homeowner happens to be one of the most recognisable faces in the country and the sister-in-law of the future King, it tends to attract a bit more attention than your average enforcement notice.

Pippa, 40, has largely stayed out of the spotlight in recent years, focusing on family life with James and their three children. The couple married in 2017 at St Mark’s Church in Englefield, Berkshire, in a ceremony that drew enormous public interest given Pippa’s own fame, which rocketed after she served as maid of honour at the royal wedding of Kate and Prince William back in 2011.

James Matthews is a wealthy former racing driver turned hedge fund manager, and the pair have built a comfortable and relatively private life in the Berkshire countryside. Their Bucklebury home sits within a part of England where planning rules tend to be strictly applied, particularly when it comes to protecting the rural character of villages and green spaces.

The council’s decision reflects a wider pattern of local authorities pushing back against incremental development on private estates and country properties, even when the changes might seem minor to the homeowners involved. A car park might not sound like a big deal, but in planning terms, laying hardstanding over land in a rural area can have real consequences for drainage, appearance, and the general feel of the countryside.

West Berkshire Council confirmed the permission was denied on the grounds that the car park was intrusive and out of keeping with the area. No special consideration appears to have been given to the identity of the applicants, with the application treated like any other retrospective planning request.

It is not yet clear whether Pippa and James plan to appeal the decision or whether they will comply and have the car park removed. Appeals against planning refusals are relatively common, and the couple would have the right to challenge the council’s ruling through the Planning Inspectorate if they chose to do so.

For now though, the council has spoken, and one of England’s most famous rural residents has been told her car park has to go.