A controversial landlord is planning to offer woodland to a council for a 15-pitch Gypsy and Traveller camp.
Fergus Wilson said he would sell Maidstone Borough Council a 12-acre chestnut coppice in Boughton Monchelsea, which he has owned since 1987, for their proposed £4m site.
He purchased the land to protect his view while he lived in Heath Road, opposite the woodland.
Last month, Mr Wilson coppiced a quarter of the site for fence palings and said his contractors would be back in September to coppice the other nine acres.
Previously, he had suggested the site could accommodate 33 new homes.
Last week, Maidstone council launched a borough-wide appeal for a suitable site to accommodate a 15-pitch gypsy and traveller camp, to join the two existing sites it already owns in the borough – at Stilebridge and at Water Lane in Kingswood.
The council said it was prepared to spend up to £4m developing the site. Each of the 15 pitches would be around 320sq metres in area, with a permanent brick-built amenity block, together with space for up to two caravans and two vehicles.
The announcement came after its Gypsy and Traveller Accommodation Assessment, published in April, identified a need for an additional 529 pitches across the borough by 2040.
Mr Wilson said: “The council has twice written to me, in previous years, and asked me whether I wished the land south of the Heath Road to be used by MBC for a gypsy/traveller site. At the time, I declined.”
“But now I will offer it to them.
“If they are interested in acquiring the site, I shall need an Expression of Interest quickly.”
He has instructed his land agent, Eddie Powell, a former Ukip parliamentary candidate in Maidstone, to make the offer
Mr Wilson said he was “very serious” about the offer.
He said: “I do appreciate it would concern locals and go down like a lead balloon, but gypsies and travellers have got to live somewhere just as everyone else.
“To say it cannot be used for a gypsy/traveller encampment would be racist.
“If this piece of land is suitable for housing, then it is also suitable for the encampment. It is near a B Road and is level land.”
A spokesman for Maidstone council said it had not yet received the offer from Mr Wilson.
That was disputed by Mr Powell, who said he had emailed William Cornall, the council’s director of regeneration and place, with the offer last week.
He said the woodland site was “perfect to meet the demand for a site, given its natural screening.”
Mr Wilson, a former maths teacher, still lives in Boughton Monchelsea. He said he had originally bought the land for £200,000.
But he warned that the council would have to react swiftly, otherwise he would revert to plans to market the land for settled housing.
The site is not allocated in the borough’s adopted Local Plan, but recently the council published figures showing that its housing land supply had dipped to 4.5 years – below the five years that the government requires.
As a result, the government says a “tilted balance” must now apply in favour of any housing proposal that comes forward.
Mr Wilson, 76, said: “People need housing and even King Canute could not hold back the tide.”
Mr Wilson and his wife Judith were once among the UK’s biggest buy-to-let landlords with a portfolio that once stretched to 1,000 properties, mostly in Ashford and Maidstone. They have since largely sold off their holdings.
He was the subject of a BBC documentary in 2019, entitled Britain’s Most Controversial Landlord, which was an epithet he earned for various decisions to ban tenants from his properties on housing benefits, to ban tenants who were victims of domestic abuse and to ban “coloured” tenants – the latter proposal was overturned in a court case.
Mr Wilson, an ex-amateur boxer, has also appeared before the courts for using a mobile phone while driving, assaulting an estate agent, harassing Ashford council staff and racially abusing a Slovakian traffic warden.
At present, he is also the subject of a court case that arose from an incident in August 2021, and has been postponed 13 times so far.
He is accused of assault by beating, threatening behaviour, and racially aggravated harassment after calling James Duffy, a Maidstone council employee, a “petty little Hitler.” But issues ranging from the Covid pandemic to administrative errors mean his court hearing keeps getting pushed back.
Mr Wilson said: “I have been waiting over four years for the case to be heard. This is hardly in the Interests of justice.”
The next scheduled hearing for Mr Wilson’s case is on February 25 at Maidstone Magistrates’ Court.
