Outline Planning Permission & Agricultural dwelling - Public forum - Planning Advisory Service (PAS)
Grŵp agored
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Wedi dechrau - Gorffenaf 2012
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Gweithgaredd diwethaf - Heddiw
Outline Planning Permission & Agricultural dwelling
An OPP with all matters reserved for an agricultural worker dwelling was given by one of our senior planning officers without any condition tying the farm to the dwelling! The owner has now sold the site and the new owners do not propose to continue the agricultural business on the farm and wish to convert it to business units. While the conversion of the farm buildings to business units is acceptable to the LA, the question is what happens to the OPP whose reserved matters have not yet been decided. Could the owners apply for a change of use of the farm buildings without affecting their existing OPP? How can we prevent the dwelling being built because the underlying business (farm) is no longer proposed to exist if we allow the change of use to the farm buildings! In theory, they could implement the reserved matters and then apply for a change of use. However that would defeat the purpoe of allowing the dwelling in the very first place. There is obviously the occupancy restrictions restricting it to the particular farm or agriculture or forestry.
The fact that the house is not tied to the farm is not the concern. The key point is that the occupancy of the house is limited to those persons employed in agriculture or forestry. It should not be standard practice to automatically condition a new agricultural workers to a specific farm because it limits the availability of such property to their workers who may not work on the said farm, but otherwise are gainfully employed in the area. The applicant would be well within his rights to implement the outline consent and there is nothing you could do about it (given that the principle of development has already been secured). Your local plan will have sufficient tools in place to prevent this house (assuming that it is built) become a 'normal' dwelling by having to ask the applicant to apply to have the condition removed and the need to have the property marketed. Otherwise, its down to the Enforcement Team to keep an eye on the place.
Tying a agricultural dwelling to the farm is generally preffered to prevent either the dwelling or the farm being sold off separately. The occupancy restriction in this case is correctly applied - i.e restricted to the farm worker or any other worker in the locality in agriculture or forestry. However since the dwelling is not tied to the farm, there is nothing stopping the applicant from selling the farm. That is exactly what is being proposed. Change of use of the farm to business unit. Once the farm is gone, doesn't the OPP of the dwelling become unimplementable because it was given for the farm in the first place ? Could we decline reserved matters application for this OPP on this ground? Theoratically, even with the farm gone, the occupancy restriction can still be complied with. So the applicant could apply for change of use of the farm but not implement the permission stariaght away. Then apply for reserved matters approval and implement the dwelling OPP first and then implement the change of use consent! If the applicant
The reserved matters include layout, so could we argue that the change of use application should include the entire site (including the land proposed for the dwelling). If the applicant simply provides a plan which has only part of the site (leaving out the area tentatively marked for dwelling in the OPP) for change of use, they could do what was described in the above post. This would leave an agricultural dwelling amidst a bunch of industrial units!