Helen Lowe has been found guilty of contempt of court after continuing to live in a home built inside a barn on her Derbyshire farm, opening the door to a prison sentence, an unlimited fine or both.

The 59-year-old sheep farmer was told to leave the unit after a planning fight that began years ago, but the court ruled on 18 May that she had not complied. Derbyshire Dales District Council had already secured an order in September 2024 requiring her to move out, and officials said she remained in the structure and had not carried out demolition work.

The case has drawn attention because it is no longer just a planning row. It is now a contempt finding, which means the issue before the court is whether Lowe should face punishment for ignoring repeated legal orders rather than whether the barn home should exist in the first place.

That is why the search term farmer faces prison sentence for illegal home inside barn is being used now. Lowe, who lived on a 40-acre farm, had previously sold a nearby bungalow before moving into the structure during the Covid lockdown, after the council said the accommodation had been built without planning permission and had been used as a home since 2020.

Lowe has described the space as a practical unit for lambing season, saying it had a bed and windows and was meant to keep her close to her sheep. “It’s a temporary building to look after my sheep when they’re lambing. It’s not Windsor Castle,” she said, adding that the council’s claim that it was concealed was wrong because “it wasn’t concealed at all.”

Derbyshire Dales District Council says the opposite. It says the unit was deliberately hidden to avoid detection, served an enforcement notice in 2020 and then took the case to the Planning Inspectorate, which threw out Lowe’s appeal in February 2022 and ordered her to stop using the barn as a home.

When that did not end the dispute, the council went back to court and secured the September 2024 order to leave. By July 2025, officials said Lowe was still living there and had not removed the structure, prompting contempt proceedings at Nottingham County Court.

The guilty finding does not yet answer the only question that now matters to Lowe: whether the judge will send her to prison, hit her with a fine, or impose both. Sentencing or another court decision is the next step, and it will decide whether this long-running farm dispute ends as a planning battle or a custodial one.