An update has been given on an American billionaire’s plans for an Oxfordshire country house in the Cotswolds.

Ronald Burkle, a businessman who co-founded the private investment firm Yucaipa Companies, LLC, is no stranger to the area, owning celebrity hotspot Soho House.

He applied to West Oxfordshire District Council to introduce the development of 4.37 hectares of farmland in Little Tew between Banbury and Chipping Norton.

This is close to Soho Farmhouse but will not be straightforward after a previous design was rejected by the council in 2022.

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A watercolour of the Little Tew country house plan.A watercolour of the Little Tew country house plan. (Image: West Oxfordshire District Council.)

Mr Burkle’s original proposal was refused for failing to represent a "truly outstanding development" and not meeting specific planning criteria.

Architect Francis Terry’s “new country house” features stables as well as a landscape garden, courtyard, solar panels, a new lake and a tree nursery alongside the house.

Yet now several members of the public as well as the Little Tew Parish Council have lodged opposition to the would-be mansion.

An objection letter from the organisation reads: “The Little Tew Parish Meeting calls upon West Oxfordshire District Council to reject on the grounds that it remains an unwarranted, unsustainable and unsuitable greenfield development that runs counter to the policies of the West Oxfordshire 2031 Local Plan and the National Planning Policy Framework 2023.”

Locals have also lodged letters of objection in the past few weeks with Margaret Norris describing the potential development as “grotesque”.

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“Rather than being a development of “truly outstanding quality”, I believe it to be a proposal of truly outstanding grotesquerie,” she said.

“The proposed landscaping, like the buildings, would be entirely out of character, unnatural and, given the area’s current habitat diversity would, in my view, constitute a Biodiversity Net Loss (BNL).

“It would be a travesty for light and sound pollution to be increased by such a massive intrusion on the outskirts of our village.

“Please reject what would clearly be an inappropriate, non-isolated, habitat-threatening, polluting, un-enhancing and insensitive ‘monstrous carbuncle’.”

Reason for refusal in the past also indicated the proposals would result "in a medium level of less than substantial harm to the setting of the Little Tew conservation”.

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An early version of the development.An early version of the development. (Image: West Oxfordshire District Council.) The site is located to the south of Banbury Road and is made up of eight fields of various sizes, six being in intensive arable cultivation, one being permanent pasture and the remaining field being reverted from arable to grassland.

The house is described as a "satellite of a great estate" such as a "dower house or a hunting lodge" but it is also referenced as an "adornment to the landscape" rather than its "focal point".

The consultation stage is continuing with almost 20 objection comments so far.

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