**Diary Entry – 20th May, 2023**
I never thought it would come to this. After years of saving, selling my flat in Manchester, even dipping into my pension—I finally built my dream home. A proper two-storey cottage in the Lake District, with big bay windows and a slate roof. And now? They tell me I can’t even live in it.
This morning, I stormed into the council office, waving the crumpled rejection letter like some madwoman. “Mrs. Wilkins!” I nearly shouted at the woman behind the counter. “What d’you mean, I can’t live there? The house is built! It’s standing right there!”
She didn’t even look up from her papers. “No permits, Mrs. Thompson. No planning permission, no building regulations sign-off. You could’ve built Buckingham Palace—doesn’t matter without the paperwork.”
I felt my knees go weak. Sank into one of those awful plastic chairs. “But the land’s mine! I used my pension lump sum, took out a mortgage! The builders said—”
“Builders say all sorts, love.” She peered over her glasses. “Laws change. No shortcuts anymore.”
I walked out in a daze. Bloody English drizzle soaked right through my coat. Sat in my old Ford Fiesta, hands shaking as I dialled my son. “Tom? Love, can you come? It’s about the house…”
Tom drove up from Leeds within the hour. Found me sitting on the porch of the house—my house—like some lost soul. It *was* beautiful. Stone walls, a proper hearth, even a little garden plot for roses. Everything I’d dreamed of since Jim passed.
“Mum,” he said, crouching beside me. “Why aren’t you inside?”
I laughed—bitter, hollow. “Because it’s illegal, apparently. The builders—that dodgy firm, Harper & Sons—they never filed the permits. Took the money and vanished.”
Tom lit a fag. I scowled—bad habit, that—but he just exhaled sharply. “Right. Solicitor tomorrow. We’ll sort it.”
The solicitor—a tired-eyed woman in a wrinkled blazer—flipped through my contracts. “It’s fixable,” she said. “But it’ll cost. Retroactive permits, surveys, court fees… fifteen grand, maybe more.”
Fifteen *thousand*? I nearly choked. “I’ve got nothing left!”
“Then,” she said coolly, “you wait for the enforcement notice. They’ll make you tear it down eventually.”
That night, I sat in my old terraced kitchen—the one I’d meant to sell—sipping tea from Gran’s chipped china. Tom rubbed my shoulder. “We’ll manage, Mum. I’ll take overtime—”
“With your mortgage? And little Emily’s school fees?” I shook my head.
A knock. Mrs. Cooper from next door barged in, no invitation needed. “Heard about your trouble. Bloody Harper & Sons—they did the same to the Wilsons down lane. Four families in Keswick, all stuck with ‘illegal’ homes.”
Turns out, it wasn’t just me. A whole lot of us, conned by the same smooth-talking crooks. By week’s end, we’d banded together—fifteen of us in the village hall, swapping horror stories.
“We sue,” old Mr. Wilson thumped the table. “Group claim.”
“With what?” someone scoffed. “Firm’s dissolved. Directors fled to Spain, probably.”
But then—hope. Mrs. Wilson’s niece, a clerk at the county office, tipped us off: a government scheme for “defrauded self-builders.” Compensation, if you proved you’d been misled.
Six months of hell followed. Endless forms, interviews, bus rides to Carlisle with folders of proof. I lost half a stone from stress. But then—
“Fifty percent,” the councilman announced. “Compensation granted.”
I wept. Actually wept.
Today, the final letter came. My cottage—*legal* at last. Tom helped me move in. Little Emily raced upstairs, shrieking about her “princess tower” bedroom.
Now, as I sit on the porch with my tea, watching the sunset paint the fells gold, I see lights flick on in the Wilsons’ place, the Harrisons’. We made it. All of us.
Funny, isn’t it? You fight so hard for bricks and mortar, but what you’re really building is grit. Persistence. The stubborn, stupid hope that if you just keep pushing—somehow, you’ll win.
And sometimes, against all odds, you do.
