BBC star's war with council over £75k gym she built WITHOUT planning permission

Scottish Sun

30-06-2025

The star says ultimately her ego led to the mistake
BAD FIT BBC star's war with council over £75k gym she built WITHOUT planning permission
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Sabre from Gladiators reboot has revealed that she spent £75,000 building a gym without planning permission and was told by a council to knock it down.
Sheli McCoy said that her 'ego' destroyed the gym, because she didn't have the patience to wait for permission to build it.
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Sabre with some of her Sweatbox team
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The Scottish weightlifter, 36, said she had been 'pigheaded', and the experience was 'very humbling and very expensive'
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Sabre from Gladiators says her own ego led to the costly mistake
The Scottish weightlifter, 36, said she had been 'pigheaded', and the experience was 'very humbling and very expensive'.
McCoy told the My Time Capsule podcast: "Do you know what, I suppose there's a lesson I've learned in life about patience and it came at the cost of an entire business to me.
"So I wish I'd never been pigheaded enough to think that I would always succeed, because I did think that.
"I opened my very first gym - so my gym now is called SweatBox Dundee, but my very first gym was also SweatBox Dundee, but we just affectionately discuss it as SweatBox 1.0.
"Then now this is SweatBox 2.0.
"Anyway, I opened this gym in an environment in Dundee, and it was meant to have been an industrial space, big units.
"They were brand new, so they'd never been used before.
"So I basically took on two from the guy that built them, built a gym, poured in £75,000 and then couldn't get planning permission.
"And they wouldn't let me make the change of use to category 11, which would have been leisure and public use.
"For a gym, that's what you would need in Scotland.
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"It was category 4, 5, and 6, which is warehouse, industrial, and storage, and that's it.
"People can't inhabit it, you can't work there on a daily basis, you just keep stuff in there.
"And I fought it, I fought it and fought it and fought it and fought it and ultimately, the council said no.
"Dundee City Council said no, and they gave us a 90 days to move notice.
"Having built this gym, and we opened the gym, because when your application is in, you can work, you can actually trade.
"So the gym was open only for a couple of months, and then Covid hit, and we closed for 14 months.
"And in those 14 months, I still fought with the council, and since all businesses and all trade had ceased, particularly in leisure and public, they wouldn't have moved us on then because the industry had shut down.
"So for 14 months, I changed my business plan with my business partner, and we trained people outside at distance when it was allowed.
"We trained people on Zoom every morning, every night.
"We gave out all of our kit to all of our members, and so we stayed afloat for 14 months, and we're still a functioning business.
"And then we opened again for another 10 weeks, and in that time, they gave me a 90 days to move notice.
"And I was so angry. I was the most angry I've ever been.
"But as I was older, it was actually a day that I was giving a seminar, and I was talking about resilience and how I built my resilience.
"It was during that seminar, I was about to go in on Dundee City Council, as you do.
"And instead, I looked at the screen and I looked at my notes, and I went, do you know what?
"This was actually my fault.
"I swear to God, it hit me in that seminar, that it was actually my fault.
"Like, that was my inability to be patient.
"If I had asked for that and they had said no, I would never have poured £75,000 into a building I wouldn't have been able to use as a gym.
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Gladiators star Sabre
"But my idea was like everyone will love this, I'll succeed.
"Everything I touch turns to gold, this will work, was actually my own failing for myself.
"And I think a very, very tough lesson to learn, very humbling and very expensive.
"But I guess I wish I could, if there's one thing I wish I'd never done or I could forget, it's that - my inability to be patient and to think that I would always succeed.
"Because funnily enough, Ryan Holiday has another book called Ego is the Enemy.
"And after I read that book, I believe it's that book that brought me to the realisation that my ego destroyed SweatBox 1.0, not Dundee City Council."