Enforcement notice — Agricultural building — Unauthorised building operations — Whether former agricultural building rebuilt to create new building — Application against enforcement notice and refusal of planning permission refused
The applicants had applied for planning permission for a redundant agricultural building at Warford Hall Farm, Merrymans Lane, Great Warford, Macclesfield. The application was for the erection of walls to form a dwelling and other building works necessary to complete the conversion and change of use as authorised by earlier planning consents in 1993 and 1994. After the applicants had purchased the property at auction, the building had its sheeted roof stripped. A timber survey revealed that roof trusses and all other timbers should be replaced. Removal of the timbers revealed instabilities in external walls and they were demolished apart from the west wall. At the time of the appeal against the enforcement notice and against a refusal of planning permission by Macclesfield Borough Council, the structure on the site incorporated that west wall to which a porch had been added. There was more extensive floor space than the original building but otherwise external walls had been built on the same height on the foundations of the original building, and the bricks had been reused. However, the inspector found specifically as a matter of fact and degree that the existing development at the appeal site could not comprise a reuse of that former building because it had been substantially demolished. It was therefore not in accordance with the terms of the earlier permissions. On appeal it was argued, inter alia, that the building works in fact constituted the minimum necessary to give effect to the planning permission and that the works had been carried out in accordance with that permission.
Held The application was refused.
1. The allegation in the enforcement notice was that the structure in question was a “new building”. As a matter of fact and degree the former building had been substantially demolished and no longer existed so that the structure now in existence was a new building.
2. The inspector was entitled to conclude from the evidence that the building operations in the present case thus fell outside the scope of the permission.
3. The law did not permit the carrying out of building operations which fell outside the scope of the planning permission simply because it was found that the permitted schemes were otherwise practicably incapable of implementation.
4. Where that was the case, the proper course was for the applicant to apply for a variation to the planning permission.
5. Further, in considering the decision to refuse planning permission, the appeal site was in the north Cheshire green belt. The inspector had concluded that the retention of the existing structure would be an inappropriate form of development in the green belt and that fact was not outweighed by other considerations.
6. The inspector’s rationale was that the demolition of the original building closed a planning chapter at the site as a result of which the historical presence of the original agricultural building could not assist in justifying a new development in the green belt location. That approach was consistent with the specific policy set out in PPG2.
Anthony Crean (instructed by Eversheds, of Leeds) appeared for the applicant; Timothy Mould (instructed by the Treasury Solicitor) appeared for the first respondent; the second respondents, Macclesfield Borough Council, did not appear and were not represented.
