messiah

On behalf of a mate of mine who thought I might know...

A mate of mine currently lives with his wife and son in a 2 bed terraced house, but with twins due later this year needs somewhere a bit bigger.

One option which has come up centres on his parents farm - One end of the Farmhouse has rooms which aren't used and so, they had the idea of building an extension and using it and the unused rooms as a seperate unit - although most likely still connected to the main house.

The Farmhouse has a restriction on that says it can only be used for farm use, and not built on to be sold off (for building plots for example)

He's rang the planners at the local council but they said "we need a set of plans" etc which cost money to produce and may just get a "no you can't" reply from the council.

Any advice on how to proceed?

Tentenths

Surely the planners must be able to give him some general non-specific guidance without the need for plans?

LG John

I am a planning officer so:

As I see it there are two issues here. The first being the proposed extension to the building. Its most likely that the Councils local plan has something to say on the size and design of extensions so unless you give the council some indication of what the extension will be like they will be unable to advise you if the extension would likely be found consistent with development plan policy. Therefore you need to give them some sort of drawing to work with. Usually you can knock something up yourself with a scale rule that will at least give a fairly good impression of the sort of form, size and appearance of extension you propose. The planners should then be able to advise you accordingly.

The second issue is the farmhouse restriction. In scotland this is known as a Section 75 Agreement (formally section 50) and if memory serves its something like a Section 106 Agreement under English planning legislation. Normally the purpose of such an agreement is to tie the use and occupation of the farmhouse to the farm. This is for the reason that the farmer otherwise could sell the house for profit and then apply to build a new one in which instance (being a farmer in all) he could probably demonstrate an operational requirement for a house to run the farm from. Whilst it will depend on your particular council I'm inclined to think they may be resistant to the idea of another family (albeit related) living in the 'annex' accommodation. At the very least you will need to amend the original s106 agreement or possibly replace it with a new one. You would possibly have to demonstraite that the remaining accommodation your parents would use would be suitable to the purpose of running the farm and tie that accommodation to the use and operation of that farm by way of a s106 agreement. Then you would have to demonstraite that you as immediate family could use the other part of the accommodation as ancillary accommodation and tie that to the remaining house so it can't be sold off independently! All pretty complex and I'm not sure the planning authority will go for it. Either way, you'll probably have to discuss the terms of the agreement with your solicitor at some point so its probably going to cost some money to determine if you can do this.

Btw, when I say 'you' I mean your brother - its just easier

messiah

Cheers - It's in England BTW and it is a mate not me!

What will probably happen is we'll apply for the extension and say that my mate still works on the farm and that the new bit will remain connected to the existing (meaning a connecting door).

I'll be doing the drawings for him as I'm an Architectural Technician.