Planning bosses are investigating whether the property Dominic Cummings stayed in during his controversial lockdown trip was built without planning permission.
The governmental advisor stayed at North Lodge, near Durham, when he travelled to the area on March 27 with his four-year-old son and wife after she started suffering coronavirus symptoms.
The building is understood to have been the site of a swimming pool and permission for the erection of a pitched roof structure over it was granted in 2001.
No other applications have made for it since, apart from the felling of trees. Mr Cummings told a news conference last week that the building was "an isolated cottage" roughly 50 metres from his parents' home, and described it as "sort of