Daniel Graham is facing years behind bars when he is sentenced at Newcastle crown court for the crime which shocked millions. He has been told he has to find ‘other accommodation’
One of the Sycamore Gap ‘morons’ who chopped down arguably the most famous tree on the planet is about to lose his home as well as his freedom.
Daniel Graham is facing years behind bars when he is sentenced at Newcastle crown court tomorrow for the crime which shocked millions of nature lovers. In the run up to his ‘moronic mission’, Graham, 39, was locked in a bitter planning dispute with his local council. He was issued with an enforcement notice by Cumberland Council for his home and business premises at Millbeck Stables on the edge of Carlisle, Cumbria, within Hadrian’s Wall’s UNESCO World Heritage site ‘buffer zone’.
Now he has been told that he has until October 28, 2025 to find ‘other accommodation’. That is almost certain to be prison for Graham and his co-accused Adam Carruthers. But the decision means Graham will have no home to come back to when he is released from his sentence.
A Cumberland council spokesperson said: “A decision was taken to uphold the council’s enforcement notice. We are now bound by the conditions from the Planning Inspectorate.
“Mr Graham has six months from the date of the decision to find other accommodation, which is October 28, 2025. If he doesn’t comply, we will consider our position at that point in time.”
Graham had a grudge against authorities who rejected his bid to live near Hadrian’s Wall. He had made an application for a ‘Lawful Development Certificate’ in 2022.
Residents and planning officials from Beaumont Parish Council, a remote Cumbrian rural community, told how they felt threatened by Graham’s ‘dominant and oppressive behaviour’.
The council rejected his retrospective bid to live on the site of his Millbeck Stables and warned he faced eviction.
In a ‘decision and reasons report’, Graham was told that the application was ‘far beyond a replacement dwelling’ as he had claimed. One of the reasons for objecting to his plans was because of its proximity to Hadrian’s Wall.
“The application site is located approximately 100m south west from Hadrian’s Wall vallum and within the World Heritage Site’s buffer zone,” the documents state.
Locals said heavy plant vehicles were regularly going in and out of the property with several ‘near misses’ on the rural roads. A neighbour in the village, Grinsdale Bridge, close to Graham’s home, said: “Every reasonable complaint he received about this monstrosity he built was met with threats and aggression.”
A large burial plot, apparently for a dead horse, can be seen from the gates to the property, decorated with lions’ heads. A final letter of refusal was made in April, 2023.
The Sycamore Gap tree was felled little more than five months later.
Several locals objected to his application to live on the site, and believe his rage against authority may have been part of his motivation for the crime.