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More Agricultural Ties dealt with... Another Certificate of Lawfulness has been received confirming the breach of an Agricultural Occupancy Condition as lawful after a continuous breach of over twenty years. A fiddly little application with a number of occupants crossing the threshold over the two decades, some of whom are no longer with us, but we were able to compile a robust body of evidence to show the required continuity of occupation by persons discordant with the tie. We worked with the applicant, their family, their land agent and their accountants for four months before submitting the application to ensure that the case was absolutely watertight. Consequently, the hard work has paid off, (as it usually does), and we are very pleased to have received the correct result with no questions asked by West Devon BC. This particular dwelling sits centrally within its own plot of six-acres, is commutable to Plymouth and Exeter and has a rather attractive view over the Dartmoor National Park. Having the breach of Condition determined as lawful will most definitely unlock a significant latent value for the owners. 
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 Her Majesty the Queen
We send our deepest condolences to the Royal Family on the death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II. The Queen’s devotion and service to her country, people and the Commonwealth for the seventy years of Her reign as monarch and the years before that, through war, peace and change, bore out a dedication and a sense of duty that is an example to us all. With profound sadness on this loss of Her extraordinary life that has been woven through the story of our nation and her family for 96 years, we offer our sympathy and support to His Majesty the King and the Royal Family. Jeremy Moody is the Secretary to the Central Association of Agricultural Valuers (CAAV). On behalf of the CAAV this week he released the following statement, the sentiments of which WRP echoes. "There are occasions when the sinews of a country are laid bare, when the veil of daily life and concerns are swept back to reveal deeper things that we rarely see. The combined death of Her Majesty Queen Elizabeth II and the accession of His Majesty King Charles III is such a moment. We commemorate, with shared and individual memories, and we look ahead. We see the value of a life of service, duty and commitment and beneath that an affirmation of continuity. Her reign and the monarchy beyond it have echoed the principles of our common law, with origins beyond memory but ever adapting to evolving circumstances as the country changed, revealing the inner principles of an old country supporting it into new ages. The Queen’s life has been woven through the fabric of the country not only over her 70 years reign but her apprenticeship as a wartime princess. Of Her 15 Prime Ministers, Her first, Winston Churchill was, born in 1874 and rode in the cavalry charge at Omdurman; Her last, Liz Truss, was born in 1975. An Empire has been dissolved with relative ease and a country moved on. Alongside the embedded symbols of state and church, regalia and public life at home and abroad, one key thread has been engagement with rural life and farming over the decades from the plough team to GPS and data. This goes beyond the family estates at Sandringham and Balmoral and the Sovereign’s land at Windsor and as Duke of Lancaster. Royal patronages across the UK are but one expression recognising the value of our countryside with sustained quiet support. The serried tractors lining the A90 as Her coffin came south from Balmoral showed how that was appreciated. Saturday’s Accession Council marked an ancient continuity, proclaiming Charles III as King who in turn gave commitments to our constitutional life. With the principles of an Anglo-Saxon charter, indeed of Magna Carta, those in public life attested to and signed a public deed, putting it beyond doubt: a ceremony with a point when a nation needs its rituals for marking change and continuity. These matters move seamlessly, as QCs at the bar become KCs. With thanks for the life of the Queen and support and sympathy for the Royal Family, our best wishes go to the new King. His long interest in rural and farming matters is well known, given practical depth with the Duchy of Cornwall’s estates and expressed in work such as the Prince’s Countryside Fund, now providing resilience advice to farmers facing change but more widely aiding rural communities and so the social fabric of countryside. Such things hold a nation together, give it resources beyond the usual. Then the veil of daily life, politics and business will be drawn back across those reserves for when they are needed." Sweating farm assets Wreyland Rural Planning were approached by landowner with an attractive range of Victorian Farm Buildings dating from the late 19th Century. The range were well built and capable of conversion, however they were beginning to dilapidate. Having been approached by a prospective commercial tenant, the landowner wished to see them re-used for commercial purposes. The LPA agreed with our arguments that while not designated as heritage assets they were capable of conversion and worthy of retention for their own sake in an alternative use, that as per the provisions of the NPPF the sequential approach should not be applied to small scale rural development, and that strong fall-back positions existed even though no prior approval applications had been submitted. This is exactly the development we love at WRP, enabling landowners to sweat their assets by putting them to more optimum uses which enables their retention for future generations while also providing jobs in the countryside.    Horticultural success in Buckinghamshire Permission was received this week for the provision of a new horticultural building for a new enterprise within the Metropolitan Green Belt. New buildings are notoriously difficult to achieve within the Green Belt, particularly where an enterprise is in its very early stages. The application was fully supported with a comprehensive Planning Statement, a full suite of plans, ecological surveys and an in depth Agricultural Justification produced by Harry Epsom MRICS FAAV of Epsom Rural. Despite the application taking nearly a year to work its way through the planning process, victory belongs at last to our client with no onerous Conditions. Now that the new horticultural enterprise has a firm base from which to flourish, we look forward to their success.  Retrospective Listed Building Consent for a Grade II Listed Building in the Cotswolds Things always seem to go wrong when you can't do anything about them... Two days into the first lockdown back in March 2020 I got toothache... Couldn't see a dentist for 99 days. Nearly drove me mad... Whilst on holiday recently I had to take our boat from its mooring, across a bay of roughly three miles, to a fuel pump located at a marina... "It'll be fine" I thought... Naturally I ran out of fuel almost equidistant between the two points... In between Christmas and New Year, Mr and Mrs S's boiler gave up the ghost, necessitating its urgent replacement. The old boiler was located within the Grade II listed dwelling, which itself is located within a Conservation Area within an Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty. The location of the old boiler had long caused trouble, and so a decision was made to situate the new boiler to the exterior of the dwelling. Normally this wouldn't be a problem, however Listed Buildings are a different beast... Works must preserve and enhance their appearance. Where they cause harm, this must be considered to be within the public interest. Therefore even fairly innocuous changes to Listed Buildings can invoke the Planning Officer's displeasure... A retrospective planning application of Listed Building Consent was made by WRP to regularise the matter, which contained a heritage report which demonstrated that the proposal would result in minimal harm to the heritage significance of the property, which was then weighed against the benefits of the proposal. The Local Authority accepted our heritage arguments. Accordingly the new boiler was allowed to stay.  Planning Success in the London Borough of Hillingdon... For a Rural Worker's Dwelling... Permission was received this week on a farm within the Metropolitan Green Belt for second dwelling which will facilitate generational succession within an existing farm enterprise. Rural Worker's Dwellings - dwellings for farm workers set within the open countryside - are always a challenge and require clear and reasoned justification. There needs to be both an essential need for the dwelling together with a functional need. Paragraph 80(a) of the NPPF states that "Planning policies and decisions should avoid the development of isolated homes in the countryside unless... [inter alia] there is an essential need for a rural worker, including those taking majority control of a farm business to live permanently at or near their place of work in the countryside." Demonstration of this requires a comprehensive and detailed understanding of both planning AND agriculture... Luckily yours truly is a master of both... (Literally... I've got a Masters degree and everything!) Once we'd informed our rather urban Planning Officer what a Rural Worker's Dwelling was, pointed them to the relevant policy within the NPPF (strangely Hillingdon's Local Development Plan is eerily silent when it came to agricultural development), shown him a few cows, some gross margins, accounts, a full report on why the farm enterprise warranted a secondary dwelling, some more cows, and how to tell the difference between cows which are small and those which are far away, the game was ours...  More agricultural buildings! Extremely pleased to have secured full planning permission for a substantial agricultural building within the Gloucester Green Belt for a local company engaged in the breeding and sale of bee nuclei. The applicant's previous consultant had informed them that as they were seeking to erect an agricultural building they could simply erect the building under Permitted Development Rights... Job done. While it may be that Sch2 Pt 6 of GPDO permits buildings for agriculture in principle, there's often a little bit more to agricultural planning than that, and unfortunately in this instance the previous consultant failed out of the gate when they didn't notice a commercial airport over the hedge (which knocked out PD). Working closely with the applicant, Wreyland submitted an application which first justified that Honey Bees are 'creatures kept for the production of food' and therefore constitute livestock. They are quantifiable, they have value, their environments and welfare are carefully managed by their keepers to produce a commodity for sale. These principles are exactly the same as say a farmer keeping dairy cattle for the sale of their milk, or breeding beef cattle from suckler cows or lamb from breeding ewes. Next we justified the use and scale of the building (being for the sale of nuclei, the packaging and preparation for sale of bee products, the maintenance of hives, the extraction of honey for bulk-sale etc) in the context particularly of The Late Mr Millington (a personal hero of mine) and his sterling work back in the 90's at Wroxeter and that while certain uses may be considered non-agricultural in isolation, when undertaken for purposes ancillary to a normal farming activity, they too can be considered reasonably necessary for the purposes of agriculture. Supporting the case further with PINS evidence, Tewkesbury allowed the building without too much further interrogation under delegated powers. Plans and design were provided by the ever reliable Charles Board, with ecology provided by Anton Kattan at Pure Ecology and arboricultural input to mitigate against risk to a belt of attractive TPO covered trees was provided by Phil Dye and Wotton Tree Consultancy. Consequently the applicants now have a new, dedicated premises in which to expand their growing business and to give it a permanent base into the future. Followers of Wreyland Rural Planning will by now be bored to tears by my growing obsession with rural economic development, but it is quite important, and something that I feel is often still not clearly understood or even taken seriously by Local Authorities, so it was positive to see in this instance the LPA taking the time to understand the applicant's proposals and for the correct result to be delivered. I wish the applicants well and every success as they take their business to the next level.  Wreyland wins its first action... We were very pleased last week to win at Appeal permission for an extension to a modern dwelling in the South Hams. The Local Authority had refused the initial application on the grounds that the proposal would interrupt the dwelling's 'barn-like' appearance, and would emit un-acceptable natural light. The Inspector agreed with Wreyland that continual roof lines and flat gable ends were not a-typical of traditional barns, and that given that the proposal was located under a street-light in a residential area, any increase in light emission would be immaterial. Really this was an application which should never have been refused, however given that only 30% or so of applications are successful at Appeal, it warranted a comprehensive planning argument. This was Wreyland's first Planning Appeal as an independent consultancy. We're exceptionally pleased that sense won the day... (That, an a five-and-a-half thousand word Justification Statement, with some guts behind it)... 
  Class Q success near Cheltenham...
Wreyland went toe-to-toe with the LPA recently for a Class Q, finally emerging bloody yet victorious... Round 1 - The LPA thought the nearby highway would be too noisy despite it being a relatively minor road some 200m away. Wreyland came back swinging with a supportive acoustic survey... Round 2 - The LPA hit low suggesting that, notwithstanding its concrete floor, steel portal frame and the fact that the building was only just over ten years old, the building wasn't structurally sound... Wreyland and the applicant grabbed a shovel one sunny Thursday evening, dug down to the foundations and came back with a structural survey... Round 3 - The LPA get back in the fight with a haymaker.... The building isn't agricultural, bee-keeping isn't an agricultural business, the use of the building is for food-processing and isn't part of an 'established agricultural unit.'... Wreyland decides to finish things and comes back with 4,000 words on agriculture and planning. The LPA concedes... |
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WREYLAND RURAL PLANNING 41 Upper Park Street, Cheltenham Gloucestershire, GL52 6SB. 01242 227887 | 07850 361598 tim.barker@wreyland.com |
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