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Of particular use to those who whose main interest in the land is not profit. These projects have a right to be judged on merit but dont expect most councils to be receptive. They quote it all the time but dont like you using it

http://www.communiti...olicystatement4

Now killed off by the NPPF.

Conclusive proof give a copy to your enforcement officer

http://www.pcs.plann...=/Decision..pdf

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I had the same dilemma last year, and ended up buying it! I fenced the footpath off, it is on a boundary, I'd not have looked twice if it came through the middle. So far its been all positive feedback, locals very impressed with what I've done clearing the overgrown path, double fencing, making it safe for their dogs, opening up views etc. But it cost around £12,000 to do, clearing 75 years of scrub is a long long job!

Of course the noseys nimbys will get their knickers in a twist when they notice my slowly slowly catchey monkey development, but I can't let that bother me, can I?!

The banned member is very busy to arrange a forum. However admin google CL you will find loads.

 

Sometimes you have to give up on people. Not because you don't care but because they don't. Common law isn't a flower that grows on everyones farm.

 

But nice people are still talking about CL even you admin.

OH BOY !!!

 

This is a precise case of a planning department not having a clue what it is doing. Or if it does know what it is doing, is lying its backside off so as to cover the deficiencies of being understaffed/underbudgetted.

 

Lambamn, if you are actively carrying out an agricultural business and it sounds as if you are and you meet all of the other criteria as laid out in the General Permeitted Development Order, Schedule 2 Part 6 - which again by the sounds of it you are, then you are entitled to notify the local planning department that you wish to erect an agricultural building in line with the GPDO regulations.

 

You do NOT have to apply for planning permission as in the FIRST instance you are asking of the planning department, whether they agree your proposals meet the guidelines as set out under the terms of GPDO.

 

The planners must give you a decision whether they agree that your notification meets those conditions or not. If they do meet all of those conditions then the only thing they can reject your notification on is siting and design. If they do not agree to your notification because of siting and design problems, then they must respond within 28 days (see below) because if they do not, then you will have obtained permission by default.

 

The 28 day rule is very precise and is as follows. The planners must, witin 28 days, make a decision on your permitted development notice. The 28 days starts on the day AFTER they Council receive your notification. So, if you hand deliver it on Tuesday, the clock starts running on Wednesday. Likewise, if the Council acknowledge reciept of your notification (if sent by post) on say the 23rd of a month, the clock starts running on the 24th.

 

It is then 28 days afterwards which is the deadline - and there is no excuses for holidays, strikes, nuclear explosions or any other feeble excuse It doesn't matter that you have sent the wrong application form. It is not a legal requirement that you use a government form. The important bits are -

• the application shall be accompanied by a written description of the proposed development and of the materials to be used and a plan indicating the site together with any fee required to be paid;

It does not matter that your notification was not valid at the time of lodging your notification. So long as it was valid within 28 days of it being lodged, then it is valid. You say payment was late but that you had made payment within 28 days of it being lodged. The caveat to this is that if you had NOT made a valid application within 28 days of lodging the notification, then the correct procedure would be for the planners to reject your notification on the grounds that, the notification did not meet the criteria (regulations) as set out within the GPDO. Once they accept it being lodged, they have accepted your notification by default..

 

Now for the planners 'nasty' bit. The planners can get away with (to some degree) not making a decision within 28 days and prevent you from taking up your permitted development rights.

 

It's is all about what is 'reasonably necessary'. Unfortunately, the 'reasonably necessary' bit is subjective and planners will usually rely on a report from their appointed independent agricultural planning consultant. Sometimes it is impossible to fight these independent agricultural consultant reports and the planning officers will generally ignore all the information that you (and any professional consultants that you may employ) provide in your application in favour of their own idiot,,, sorry independent agricultural advisor. Planners might NOT make a decision within 28 days and then at a later date, say your proposed development is not reasonably necessary. This in effect means it does not meet the regulations of General Permitted Development and therefore is not permitted development.That being the case, it is probably not worth making a planning application becuase they will turn it down for the same reasons.

 

On his website, the planning lawyer Martin Goodall makes point that if a proposed development  for permitted development does not met all the criteria(regulations) then it can not be considered as Permitted Development. That is clear cut on regulations such as being within 25 meters of a road ,,, you cannot argue if your development is only 20 meters from a road, it is not 25meters! But the reasonably necessary test is subjective and I feel MG is wrong to support that planners can fall back on such a point AFTER 28 days have passed. Until case law sees fit to change it though, the reasonably necessary rule is something to be very wary of.

 

My advice is if a Council do not issue a decision within 28 days, wait until they do and then see what reasons the quote are. From there you can see if their reasons are valid or not and whether you may start development because the Council have acted incorrectly.

 

To combat whether an agricultural building is reasonably necessary has been covered above in another post but I will stress the point.

 

To justify a building you must allocate all the space you require with a reason and preferrably a reason that no one can sensibly counter. So, a tractor is X lon, X wide and X high. It needs an access path to park it safely within a building of X. The same goes for other farming implements (my feeling is that you don't have to own all of these implements yet but that you could reasonably expect to purchase them soon and have a demonstrable need on your farm) you may wish to house. Then there is all the farming equipment, everything from day to day tools, a workshop facility for general repairs, consumables, oild, grease etc, feed stuffs and hay, a secure store for valubles and so on.

 

Just be very precise. Indeed, it is good to be slightly,, neigh, very OCD over such matters as the stronger case you out, the more the planners will have to find evidence to counter your evidence. hence, do not lie. Be truthful and accurate and the planners will have to be deceitful to reject your claims.

 

I am sorry to hear about your woes with the planners Lambman and I am sad to say it is pretty much the same countrywide. Occasionally one runs into a planning officer who is both sensible and reasonable but it is rare. I have no affinity with them what so ever and remain outspoken about their ineptitude, so if I come across slightly 'anti' it is not because I am some rebel but more that I have encountered so many cases of absurd stupidity within planning departments that it beggars belief. Please drop me a private message if you so wish to you online application and I will happily take a quick look for you.

If you know the right people, have the money to throw at it (or them), you will be give pp anywhere,  I have seen it first hand during my time working with a rural chartered surveyor.   At the end of the day, if we own the land we should have the right to live on it, after all not many of us want to be there to spoil it do we.

 

The f2f route is difficult, at times it pushes the boundaries of the rules just managing to stay within them. Planning departments across the uk are too inconsistent. I agree the countryside would be spoilt if it were covered in houses, just drive through Ireland and look at the stark new houses in almost every little field. Daft.ie has hundreds of them, every housewifes dream home, mortgaged to the hilt and not able to complete due to the recession(s).  There are an awful lot of people out there who's idea of hell would be living in the countryside without streetlights, 24/7 shopping and constant noise pollution.

 

However, I want to live on my land for lots of reasons. Not because I want to earn a living wage but because I can live far more economically if I don't rely on supermarkets, or need a vehicle to go shopping.  I have my own spring water and would use composting toilets so would not contribute to the foul water recycled through our taps/kidneys God knows how many times. Now there's a topic!

 

My land is ideally suited for solar pv, I could be completely off-grid so please don't build nuclear power stations on my behalf. My kids would have the room they need to play and exercise, something they lack in the modern little shoebox house I have rented for the last four years. They could also experience the cycle of life for themselves, not that they have missed out much so far.

 

My pipedream home is something akin to a hobbit house, earth bermed, nothing big or fancy but barely visible from outside, creating little impact on the environment but a huge impact on myself and my family.

 

 

ps does anyone else find the "snow dots" annoying?

I've only just come back to this forum after a rather long break due to illness, and this is one of the first posts that caught my eye. I had intended to provide a lot of technical help to these forums last year, relating to off-grid services of all types in order to help out those folk whose knowledge and skills are more focussed on agriculture than things technical.

At some point I'll be producing a manual which will cover every aspect of power generation, fuels, pumps, water extraction and supply, sewage, heat sources etc, which will be offered at low cost to F2F book owners. A lot of this information is already being put to use on my own 14 acres which will now finally get the attention it deserves after such a long break.

Meanwhile, just to add my tuppence worth to this thread, I assume that your inverter is a fairly low wattage square-wave type? Hence not being able to run a TV, and you'll probably find that anything with a motor will run poorly too. Without getting too technical, a square-wave (or modified-wave) inverter is a crude (hence cheaper) way of producing the 60 hertz frequency needed for AC power. The current spends too long at 0 volts whilst cycling up and down 60 times per second, and hence can't properly run motors, including those in fridges, due to their need for a smooth supply. TVs are also affected by this. The analogy would be that of pedalling a bicycle - you wouldn't get far if you kept pausing every time the pedal reached the top of it's stroke!

The solution is to use a 'pure sine-wave' inverter which replicates mains electricity far more efficiently. It costs a bit more, as a quick glance at Ebay will show, but will run everything within it's rated capacity. I personally run a 3kw inverter which will even handle my dishwasher (bit decadent I know!), and I use a smaller 1kw inverter for general standby duty. The bigger one is only turned on when needed due to it's higher 'idle' power consumption. All inverters consume power whilst turned on, even if not in use, and the larger cheap ones can eat 1 amp or more per hour on standby. A high quality pure sine-wave unit can have a standby rating as low as 0.2 amp. It should also be noted that induction motors (i.e. power tools, fridges, pumps etc) have a startup surge of upto 10X the rated current. In other words, a fridge rated at 90 watts will require 900 watts to start up, hence my use of the 1kw inverter to keep my fridge running. My advice: buy the best quality second-hand pure sine-wave inverter that you can afford for the size you need. There are loads on Ebay all the time but avoid the Chinese-made ones like the plague!

Second point, more briefly, if you're going to get a diesel generator then try to get an older model with an in-line injector pump, as opposed to the modern rotary injector pump. The good reason being that the in-line models are lubricated by the engine oil but the rotaries rely on lubricant in the fuel onl;y. This becomes a serious issue when using home-made fuels, including a lot of bio-fuels, which don't have lubricants in them. Injector pumps are incredibly reliable until abused, after which they become incredibly expensive to repair (definately not a DIY job!). I mention this because I intend growing a couple of acres of rapeseed oil to power my generator (almost) for free. I'm sure most of you know that vegetable oils make a good fuel for diesel engines, and rapeseed oill is a particularly good fuel in this respect. An acre will produce at least 2000 litres of cold-pressed oil, with the remaining two thirds of crop weight making either an excellent high protein animal feed or very efficient fire fuel.

Sorry if I've rambled a bit, there's a huge amount of information on off-grid services. I'll try and get it across in a structured fashion in future.

Many thanks pigman & wurzel,

I managed to live here without planning permission for 18 months whilst engaged in renovating a brick barn. Someone grassed me up and the council people turned up one day - then the fun began.

Its not the first time we have had to do battle as we won planning for farm track, polys, office and mess room on appeal in 2006. Shortly after this was won, other half encountered a head injury which stopped play for over 3 years.

Work was not completed so if needs must we could become busy building though I think the 5 years planning permission is up in the next couple of months.

Yes most of the incidents have indeed been reported and I kept the police letters.
I also recorded the deaths incurred as a result of not being here when needed. (well record of everything in the on-farm book that ended up at the local hunt)

I have sent all the details as suggested so I can hopefully find enough holes in this consultant's report.

I am still alive. Miracle upon miracle that I remembered login info. Still farming but lost battle for house,,, for now Will attempt login from PC rather than phone soon, to give a more detailed up date.

Well the lorry turned up yesterday, full of sheet metal cladding, 1.5 tonnes…H  and me where ready for a long hand ball job of off loading , when all of a sudden the neighbour drives past, see's what we are about too do, turns around goes home and returns with his forklift…what a star that man is…then gives me a bollocking last night when we take a bottle of red around for him….no need for that john, he says...

 

any help you need, just shout 

 

when i read how some neighbours treat people, we know how very lucky we are to have such great neighbours

 

all is going well, its been a bit of a struggle with all this rain, but no flooding..just lots of mud….

very exciting times ..loving every minute

Also remember we are challenging the council and the courts in some cases for members of this forum. When that ordeal is over I am very sure you will get to read about it here in the Common Law section when those members are ready to talk about it. I for one believe they will and it will inspire and give hope to all of you that read it.

So....even if the council DO challenge 'you'. They will still fail in Court. Especially for those that get the paperwork correct from the outset

For sale 34 alpacas !! Sorry had to be said

i agree with tim'rous beastie with everything but the snow dots.  I  have been watching them for hours and listening to this track   http://romeoandjulie...track/red-black . ( had a day off).

  i don't agree with the prevailing view that without planning departments the countryside will be concreted over. (its not as simple as that)

   Only 7.9% of the uk is classified as urban and only 2.4 % of the uk has any development on it. It only looks overdeveloped because the bits us commoners are allowed to live on have all the development where as the rich live on the vast estates.  the law and the 'system' is designed to keep that in place.

Since money seems to 'rule OK' - maybe its not a bad thing that 'the rich' have swathes of land they don't have to build on -  (but not golf courses, hopefully - they look awful!). I'd be nervous of losing the countryside -  like so many people - if they didn't because even if you can't use it, you kind of know its there. Usually major wealthy land owners are much more reliable and in sympathy with the environment than the tinpot up-jumped dictators working for the councils who seem to bow to the highest bidder where planning is concerned.

The thing I despair of is the builders using the 'shortage of housing' to build hopeless boxes with no space for kids to run and grow in. Buying land and making it pay so you can keep it and live on it should go some way to mitigating this. England's lost so many small farms in the last 50 years and this is a way to start putting them back. Thats how I see it, anyway - much better than huge fields, imported food and a pile of brick boxes for people to live in. A new generation of small farms covering the land - thats good!

They are trying to intimidate you. tell them you do not need planning permission to stay in a mobile home whilst engaged in building or engineering works.  and ask them specifically where it is prohibited to carry out building or engineering works because of the spa

   Yes.  they would have tried to refuse your permitted development if the 5km was an issue.

  If you are allowed to build the barn then you are entitled to stay there whilst engaged in that process.

Can it be done ?
Have you seen the bucking bronco rides you get at parties and weddings ?
Can you stay on for more than a minute ?
Have you seen that huge bendy wire zig zag snake that you have to run a hoop over it with out touching the sides or it buzzes and flashes ?
Can you do it ?
Twice ?
Rubbicks cube ?
Can you do it ?
Pull a pound coin from behind someones ear from an empty hand ?
Can you do it ?
Get a anglian windows rep around to your house on three occasions for 2 hour a time then not buy ?
Can you do it ?
Open a packet of haribos and not eat the lot ?
Ok ill stop now

We had an arranged visit from EH for our kitchen and meat storage, got a rating of 5 (out of 5), so Jam production continues and we are ok to start storing and sending out (pre-packed) refrigerated and frozen meats