District planners said keeping the mobile homes would harm the surrounding countryside.

A bid to keep two mobile homes at a Honiton farm for security officers to work in has been refused by district planners.

Applicant Robert Hemans also sought to retain a storage container at Brookside Farm in Dunkeswell.

However, in a refusal notice posted by East Devon District Council, planners said the mobile homes would have an ‘intrusive’ impact on the site’s surrounding environment.

In the notice, the council said: “The mobile homes are in an isolated and unsustainable location in the open countryside and no essential need or special circumstances have been demonstrated to justify their retention.

“Furthermore, they are an unsympathetic form of development which intrude on the countryside and fail to conserve the landscape and scenic beauty of the area.”

The council added that ‘in the absence of any robust evidence of need’, and given the ‘harm to the landscape of the AONB’, the proposal was contrary to several strategies.