Shocking new images have revealed that the £200,000 spa built by Captain Sir Tom Moore’s family is now totally flattened.
The incredible pictures show the unauthorised structure has now been reduced to just a pile of bricks and rubble after the veteran’s daughter Hannah Ingram-Moore and her husband were ordered to tear it down.
Workmen have been toiling at the site in Marston Moretaine, Bedfordshire, for the last week after a November ruling which demanded that the spa be demolished within three months.
Now villagers have said that they’re glad the spa is gone. Sue Martindale, 60, said: “They live in a big house and they thought they could get away with it.”
She told The Mirror: “They deserve what they have got.”
In August 2021 the couple were granted permission to build a Captain Tom Foundation Building to house the covid hero’s memorabilia.
Sir Tom was knighted by the late Queen after raising an astonishing £38 million for NHS charities by completing 100 sponsored laps of the garden of the home during the pandemic in 2020. He died in February 2021 aged 100.
The couple used the foundation’s name on their first set of plans but it wasn’t used in a later retrospective application for a larger building with a spa pool – which was refused in November 2022.
Planning officials said that the spa – attached to their £1.2m mansion – was built in a design which did not have planning permission.
The spa could be seen being ripped out by a crane last Friday – which was exactly three years to the day of Captain Sir Tom’s death on February 2, 2021.
Jackson Demolition oversaw the work and builders used a hydraulic rotating grab attached to an excavator to pull part of the structure from the inside and pound into its roof.
Planning inspector Diane Fleming ruled the spa was to be demolished despite Ms Ingram-Moore’s claim it would be used by the Captain Tom Foundation to “offer rehabilitation sessions for elderly people in the area”.
The foundation is the subject of an investigation by the Charity Commission amid concerns about its management and independence from Captain Sir Tom’s family. The charity watchdog opened a case shortly after the 100-year-old died. It launched its inquiry in June 2022.
