One of the stars of cult reality TV show Storage Hunters is embroiled in a bitter row with residents in Cambridgeshire after he bought up small areas of land around their homes and is now trying to charge them £30,000 a year each to park their cars.

Daniel Hill, a self-proclaimed businessman, who spent £18,000 to buy the plots, is telling Haslingfield locals to cough up £576 a week for the right to park their cars outside their homes. They had previously been doing so for free and had been for decades.

The 41-year-old is believed to have asked for an eye-watering £200,000 “compensation” fee from an elderly couple to forfeit his right to build on a small green space that they have been cultivating for around 50 years. The pair have been maintaining a gorgeous hedge and tending to an ancient willow tree since the 1970s.

The hard-nosed Norfolk businessman, who appeared on the UK version of Storage Hunters, earned his celebrity status with a cheap catchphrase: “I’ll have some of that!”

During the show contestants would have to bid on locked up storage units, hoping that the contents would earn them a fortune.

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Hill, known on the show as Dapper Dan, appeared in all five series and was known as a “main buyer”.

However, in 2018, after the show had been taken off-air, he was convicted of managing an illegal dump on the Surrey green belt. He was made to pay a £2,500 fine as well as a £26,814.75 confiscation order.

The businessman, who bizarrely worked as a stand-in for Sacha Baron Cohen in the West End smash-hit Les Miserables, has not only claimed he owns two plots of land but also some of someone’s garden and the rights over the public road.

In early 2023 he managed to purchase unused plots on the Badcock Road housing estate at auction after the developer went into liquidation. However residents were none the wiser.

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The first shot across the bows was made in October, when Hill turned up on Badcock Road armed with a chainsaw and proceeded to cut at a tree on the estate’s “tree planting area”.

He then proceeded to take a yellow spray can and spray lines on the road, marking where he believes he owns and will charge residents to park.

Chartered Accountant Jonathan Wheeler told MailOnline: “The original developer MJ Shanley Ltd went bust and their assets were sold at auction. This included these plots of land in Badcock Road.

“Hill bought them for about £18,000, including fees. He told us that he wants to build houses on them. But these plots of land don’t have planning permission and they are unlikely to get it.

“So the residents got together and we made a fair offer to buy the land from him. We offered him £40,000.

“But he refused our offer. He said the plots of land were worth hundreds of thousands of pounds and that he had the right to charge us £30,000-a-year each to park our cars in the street.

“It’s completely outrageous. He says it’s not about the money. But he is trying to hold us to ransom. So the residents have got together and we are going to fight back.”

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Hill told MailOnline: “We have always wanted to live in Cambridge[,] we saw a plot of land for sale online valued at £2,000 which included to [sic] potential building plots, roads, paths and a parking area … We bought the land for £12,000.

“Before purchasing the land we did all the checks and found that their [sic] were no restrictions and in fact there was a planning polices [sic] that actually promoted development in the village.

“I have not held anyone to ransom, intimidated nor threatened anyone [,] all I have done is purchase land that was for sale.”

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