Jeremy Clarkson has won a 13-month planning saga to improve car parking at his Cotswolds pub, but he faces another showdown for its overflow area.

The former Top Gear host has been given permission by West Oxfordshire District Council for a permanent 170-space car park and the ‘formalising’ of staff parking at the Farmer’s Dog in Asthall.

The pub has been a huge hit with fans of his Amazon Prime show Clarkson's Farm, but it's not been quite as popular with locals who are fed up with the huge increase in cars on the road. 

Despite the latest planning victory, there is still a row rumbling over Mr Clarkson leasing a nearby 34-acre field, which he is using as an overflow car park.

As soon as Mr Clarkson acquired the pub lease, he knew he needed to increase its parking capacity because of what happened previously when he opened his hugely popular Diddly Squat Farm Shop near Chadlington.

The overflow car park is now covered in strengthened aluminium sheets to protect a neighbouring 1,400-year-old burial mound, which contains the remains of an Anglo-Saxon warlord.

A geophysical survey beneath the ground was triggered last summer when Mr Clarkson applied for retrospective planning permission to use the field as a temporary overflow car park, despite him using it for that exact purpose for the past year already.

Locals have complained about the application, saying Clarkson only wants planning for 360 cars, although they say they have spotted 1,000 parked there at a time in the past year. 

Jeremy Clarksonhas won a 13-month planning saga to improve car parking at his Cotswolds pub, but he faces another showdown for its overflow area

The former Top Gear host has been given to West Oxfordshire District Council for a permanent 170-space car park (pictured) and the ‘formalising’ of staff parking at the Farmer’s Dog in Asthal

Despite the latest planning victory, there is still a row rumbling over Mr Clarkson leasing a nearby 34-acre field, which he is using as an overflow car park (pictured). The overflow car park is now covered in strengthened aluminium sheets to protect a neighbouring 1,400-year-old burial mound, which contains the remains of an Anglo-Saxon warlord

Asthall Parish Council remarked in its last planning meeting in December that it met with locals and sent their concerns to West Oxfordshire District Council.

Minutes stated that the concerns ‘included support for a heritage input concerning the surfacing of the car park, police input, the actual number of parking spaces needed and the fact that it is for temporary use.’