Green belt land and planning permission

[Phil Pascoe]

Sorry Paul but I don't agree with you. I'd go to a local planning clinic first and then see what they say before going down the planning consultant route.

Down here at least you have to pay for an outline planning application - they'll tell you nothing. I went through this less than a couple of years ago with a plot that belongs to my bil. It used to be that they'd give you the lowdown first, but that doesn't make them money.

 

[whiskywill]

I know of a large house built in a large field in what I am fairly sure is a Green Belt area. They have a few polytunnels on site and open to the public for up to six weeks a year in the summer to sell bedding plants. I say up to six weeks because they have been known to sell out in three weeks and I know they buy in the plants because I have seen the labels on the plants.

I guess they have some kind of agricultural/horticultural condition attached to their permission.

 

[kdampney]

I've been thinking of self-build at some point in the future, and the guides I've read about plots and planning basically say: don't buy a plot/field unless you have at least Outline Planning Permission. Anything else is a gamble. As is often quoted, only 6-10% of land in England is developed, so the chances of a particular field getting zoned for development within your lifetime are slim at best. Our local council offers pre-application advice, which I think is free, and would indicate whether they will dismiss applications out of hand.

Check your local council's Core Strategy (our local county's one says that anything outside of existing village boundaries are a no-go - though that doesn't explain the estates of 30+ houses that occasionally pop up, as DTR mentioned above).

This may be helpful: http://www.self-build.co.uk/buying-right-plot

 

[RogerS]

..... so the chances of a particular field getting zoned for development within your lifetime are slim at best......[/url]

Don't you believe it. Worcestershire County Council and also Herefordshire CC are both letting fields be built on as if there is no tomorrow. And they have loads of brownfield sites. In a nearby village there are plans for 80 houses to be built. This on a field adjacent to a single track road. Go figure. Water pressure is already poor. Sewage full to bursting. No local amenities. Hardly any bus service to speak of and the primary school is full. Oh, and the local telephone exchange aka small box by the side of the road has no spare lines. But hey...when did commonsense come into the equation?

Did I mention brownfield sites? Well, take a look at the size of this one.

Hereford Racecourse went bust. Prime building land. Compulsory purchase, i say.

 

[Phil Pascoe]

Roger, we've got that in our area - inadequate sewerage, storm drains, water mains, roads, schools, hospitals and so on. They've given permission for a new road which effectively goes from nowhere to nowhere with 7,800 houses on it. From what's completed in the area so far, they are little more than human battery houses.

 

[kdampney]

We've got 4,600 homes going on fields near where I work - the roads are already horrendous. :|

..... so the chances of a particular field getting zoned for development within your lifetime are slim at best......[/url]

Don't you believe it.

I was meaning that building a single house on a random field in the middle of the countryside is very unlikely to get planning, unless consultants are involved. But when councils are compelled to build X thousand homes per year, you can understand them pointing to an empty spot on the map and saying "There!". Shame the infrastructure rarely gets improved at the same time...

 

[RobinBHM]

Sorry Paul but I don't agree with you. I'd go to a local planning clinic first and then see what they say before going down the planning consultant route.

Hi Roger, my own experience is that planning departments are generally pre-programmed to be negative, or at best non-committal, on anything except the most straightforward and simple matters, they will quote you all the applicable policies and guidelines and then interpret them as to why they think they are unlikely to support an application, or give you a neutral/non-committal answer that leaves you none the wiser.

They will take 3 to 6 months to do this and charge several hundred pounds while stating at the end of it that they reserve the right to change their minds and decide something completely different if you choose to try and rely on their advice/opinion and spend £000's and another six to nine months on a subsequent actual application !

A planning consultant would know all the applicable policies and guidelines and how to interpret them and give guidance on whether you are likely to be able to achieve anything, what it is that you are likely to be able to achieve (if anything), and how to go about giving yourself the best chance of success.

Planning departments are in my experience generally reactive and negative while the consultants work for you and are proactive in their approach to finding solutions and ways forward. Chalk and cheese.

Having recently secured permission for back garden development after a couple of years of multiple planning applications I speak from some experience, but it may be others have had better experiences with other planning departments !

Cheers, Paul

I would agree with that. Planning officers and conservation officers are quite non-committal in pre-app advise, so anything that could be even slightly controversial, they will say 'I wouldnt be able to support the application, due to xyz planning policy'. Since a pre-app can take a few weeks and requires drawings, it is often best to just to go ahead and submit an application.

The chances of consent on green belt are small, so discussing it with a planning consultant is well worth while, they will certainly know if the chance is zero. Some research locally to find if there has been any consent on countryside and hence setting a precedent will provide some insight into whether the idea is worth persuing.

 

[RogerS]

 

[Mannyroad]

Interesting thread. The borough where I live is full of brownfield sites sitting empty. Yet at the end of my road there's a greenfield site that's having 380 homes built on it. The access is opposite a school on what is almost a country lane. The local council rejected the planning application, but it was appealed and eventually escallated up to Eric Pickles, and the fat **** approved it. So I guess if you want to a build a single house for your family you can't, but if you're Barretts you can do whatever you like :roll:

DTR, you hit the nail right on the head. Cameron really did his bit to destroy decades of considered and damned good planning regulation, by the introduction of the NPPF, which set Local Authorities an impossible job of ensuring they provide a five year supply of housing land, land which is available on brownfield sites but this isn't where developers want to build because there's less profit in it. Why sell a four bedroom house for £350k when you can get another £100k profit if it comes with a nice rural setting. This has seen an explosion of poorly thought out, lazily assembled, predatory applications for greenfield development throughout the countryside, by profit-greedy consultants and landowners, contemptuous of the planning system and its well considered objectives, all of them with just one thing in mind...and that doesn't need spelling out (oops, or have I already done that).

Fact is though, countryside does not get replaced, once it's gone it's gone. And presently it's disappearing exponentially. And isn't it funny how we all say 'oh, it can't hurt' but funny how it seems to hurt when it's on our own doorstep.

Sorry for my outburst here, but I live in a small rural village that hasn't really changed for almost 100 years, but since Cameron and his cronnies stuck their oar in to the planning system our village is under heavy attack by those very consultants and landowners who would happily see good quality agricultural land, something that can't be replaced once gone, turned into modern, incongruous, poorly conceived housing estates (carbuncles) on the outskirts of the village. There, I got it out of my system, haha!

 

[doctor Bob]

Mark Twain......... "buy land they don't make it anymore"

 

[Cheshirechappie]

Interesting thread. The borough where I live is full of brownfield sites sitting empty. Yet at the end of my road there's a greenfield site that's having 380 homes built on it. The access is opposite a school on what is almost a country lane. The local council rejected the planning application, but it was appealed and eventually escallated up to Eric Pickles, and the fat **** approved it. So I guess if you want to a build a single house for your family you can't, but if you're Barretts you can do whatever you like :roll:

DTR, you hit the nail right on the head. Cameron really did his bit to destroy decades of considered and damned good planning regulation, by the introduction of the NPPF, which set Local Authorities an impossible job of ensuring they provide a five year supply of housing land, land which is available on brownfield sites but this isn't where developers want to build because there's less profit in it. Why sell a four bedroom house for £350k when you can get another £100k profit if it comes with a nice rural setting. This has seen an explosion of poorly thought out, lazily assembled, predatory applications for greenfield development throughout the countryside, by profit-greedy consultants and landowners, contemptuous of the planning system and its well considered objectives, all of them with just one thing in mind...and that doesn't need spelling out (oops, or have I already done that).

Fact is though, countryside does not get replaced, once it's gone it's gone. And presently it's disappearing exponentially. And isn't it funny how we all say 'oh, it can't hurt' but funny how it seems to hurt when it's on our own doorstep.

Sorry for my outburst here, but I live in a small rural village that hasn't really changed for almost 100 years, but since Cameron and his cronnies stuck their oar in to the planning system our village is under heavy attack by those very consultants and landowners who would happily see good quality agricultural land, something that can't be replaced once gone, turned into modern, incongruous, poorly conceived housing estates (carbuncles) on the outskirts of the village. There, I got it out of my system, haha!

I see what you're saying, and to some extent I agree with you. However, there is another factor in play; the housing shortage. During the tenure of the last government, there was a rapid increase in the population, and a rapid increase in house prices, two factors which have combined to make finding a home very difficult for some people. One way to address that problem is to increase the housing stock, which is something the last government didn't do much of. Consequently, the current government find themselves between a rock and a hard place; damned if they don't address the housing shortage, and damned if they do since that will inevitably mean more land disappearing under concrete. The houses have to go somewhere, and it's probably better if they go where demand for housing is highest; that's inevitably going to mean pressure in some parts of the country not seen in others.

Balanced against that is the argument that a larger population needs more food, and as the UK arleady imports about 40% of what we eat and rising, we have another problem. We can't afford to lose productive agricultural land.

I'd be reluctant to lay all the blame on any particular government (or local authority). I think they've all made mistakes, some of them quite large ones. But we are where we are. We can't shrink the population, or expand the geographical size of the country, or significantly change the economic factors affecting population distribution (despite rhetoric to the contrary).

(FWIW, parts of the green belt is under threat around my home town, causing some fairly heated public debate, so I do have some sympathy with what you're saying.)

I'm damned if I know what the 'right' answer is to it all. I don't think anybody else knows either. I'm glad it's not my problem!

 

[Phil Pascoe]

There needs to be very good incentives for building low cost housing on brownfield sites (more often than not closer to where the jobs are). It's not luxury housing in the countryside that there's a great shortage off.

 

[powertools]

I think that for anybody to give advice they would need much more information, at the moment all we know you have found a plot of land that even a farmer cannot access for farming and it is green belt land of 5 acres that you would like to build a house on and turn the land into a garden for the new house.
Your best course of action is to do a lot of research yourself starting with latest government policy with regards to greenbelt development here:-

https://www.gov.uk/government/news/coun ... -belt-land

Then read the information on the planning portal site.

Then ask the same question on the self build and ebuild forums


Then as Mark Twain says land will always be a steady investment but to be able to buy cheap land and get permission to build on it is a pipe dream these days, all developers know about any land for sale or possible development sites and if they aren't interested there will be a good reason and any land owner knows that if a plot of land could get permission for a house it would be worth the going rate for a building plot.

 

[doctor Bob]

I think there is a little misunderstanding.
I want the land for another reason other than building, I have about 30 years left in me, if I could get planning permission for something during that time it would be a nice bonus.

 

[Cheshirechappie]

I think there is a little misunderstanding.
I want the land for another reason other than building, I have about 30 years left in me, if I could get planning permission for something during that time it would be a nice bonus.

Original question, "Anyone ever been successful at getting planning permission on green belt land.
If so, how?"

I can see how the misunderstanding might have arisen....

 

[heatherw]

I do know someone who bought a field in Cornwall, planted hundreds of trees on it and later got permission to build a log cabin on it which was not to be lived in. It still has a little kitchen and toilet, though.....

 

[Mannyroad]

Would it be for a single dwelling or a larger development ?

Cheers, Paul

single probably

This tells me there's more afoot than "other reasons". Speaks development to me. :wink:

 

[RogerS]

Cannabis farm?

 

[doctor Bob]

Would it be for a single dwelling or a larger development ?

Cheers, Paul

single probably

This tells me there's more afoot than "other reasons". Speaks development to me. :wink:

If it all goes through (no gaurantees), I can then tell you the reasons for wanting it........... should know within a month, a house is very much secondary but would be a nice retirement present

 

[doctor Bob]

Hi all,
Just to finish this thread.

The land was within the boundries of my town, 5 acres of green belt land, owned for 40 years who never managed to get planning permission.
I was going to buy it for my wifes business (dog training plus more). However after agreeing a price there was a bit of a dilemma about a clawback clause which due to an excessively high figure I backed out of the deal as it would make it virtually impossible to sell on.

Now looking at houses with paddocks attached