Agenda item

Application No C23/0148/17/LL Uwchlaw'r Rhos, Penygroes, Caernarfon, Gwynedd, LL54 7UE

Erection of rural enterprise dwelling and associated work

LOCAL MEMBER: Councillor Arwyn Herald Roberts

Link to relevant background documents

Decision:

DECISION:

To approve contrary to the recommendation

Conditions:

· Five years

· In accordance with the plans

· Measures to improve biodiversity

· Archaeological survey

· Drainage plan

· Protect the public footpath

· Withdrawal of permitted rights

· Agricultural / rural enterprise employees’ condition

Minutes:

Construction of a rural enterprise house and associated work.

Attention was drawn to the late observations form.

a) The Assistant Head of Environment Department highlighted that the decision had been deferred at the Planning Committee meeting on 22/05/2023 in accordance with his instruction as there was significant risk to the Council in respect of the Planning Committee's intention to approve the application contrary to officers’ recommendation. The matter had been referred to a cooling-off period in accordance with the Committee’s standing orders. The purpose of reporting back to the Committee was to highlight the planning policy issues, the possible risks and the possible options for the Committee before it reached a final decision on the application.

The Members were reminded that this was a full application for planning permission to construct a rural enterprise dwelling on Uwchlaw’r Rhos Farm outside the village of Penygroes, on a site outside any village boundary as defined in the Joint Local Development Plan (JLDP).

In presenting an assessment of the Planning considerations, it was emphasised, with regard to protecting the countryside, that very special justification was required to approve the construction of new dwellings, and that applications would only be approved in exceptional circumstances. It was noted that those exceptional circumstances were contained in Technical Advice Note 6: Planning for Sustainable Rural Communities – July 2010 (TAN 6), and that one of the requirements was the need to submit information relating to the functional test, time test, financial test and the other dwellings test to prove the need and justification for constructing a dwelling in open countryside.

In respect of the functional test and the time test, it was noted that there were three partners in the business with one of the partners (the applicant's son) living on the farm permanently, working on the farm occasionally and in a position to supervise the farm's activities during difficult hours. It was added that the applicant lived 1.6 miles from the site and had done so since purchasing the business in 2018, and that the applicant's sister lived in the second dwelling on the site – a second house within the ownership of the applicant's family, which enabled sufficient supervision of the site. No information had been received indicating their intention to change the farming system, which would change the situation to necessitate a permanent presence on the land. The Council had not been convinced that robust evidence had been submitted as explicit confirmation that the applicant needed to be available permanently on the farm, considering the circumstances of the holding.

In the context of the financial test, it was noted that the applicant was required to provide financial evidence for a period of at least three years, and also assess whether the size and cost of the proposed dwelling were commensurate with the enterprise's ability to fund and maintain the dwelling without harming the ongoing viability of the enterprise, and demonstrate a reasonable prospect that the business would make earnings on the labour employed for at least the subsequent five years. In addition, the figures should show that the business could cope with paying workers' wages (1.5 in this case) and that there were earnings left over to maintain the business and construct the dwelling. Although accounts had been submitted which showed a profit and that the partners received a proportion of the profit, it was unclear whether the applicant was in receipt of a salary from the business as a full-time employee. It was not clear either whether one of the sons received a salary from the business as an agricultural contractor and the second son as a casual worker on the farm. Consequently, it was not considered that the applicant had provided sufficiently robust information to indicate that the business's financial position was sound enough to warrant the construction of a house, therefore the application could not be supported as it had failed the financial test.

It was not considered that adequate reasons or evidence had been submitted with the application to satisfy local and national planning policy criteria, therefore the members would be required to present reasons and evidence to justify permitting the application contrary to the officers' recommendation, also taking into account that the application under consideration here was for a new dwelling in open countryside. The officer referred to the risks to the Council should the Committee resolve to approve the application, and also the three options that were available to the Committee to consider:

a) Refuse the application in accordance with the recommendation – no risks to the Council. If the applicant was dissatisfied with the Council’s refusal, there would be a right to appeal the refusal.

b) Approve the application with a standard planning condition for a rural enterprise house and other usual planning conditions. However, the Council would have to accept the risk of a planning application being submitted in future to lift the condition, and the strong potential that this would have to be permitted, bearing in mind that there was no evidence of a need for a new rural enterprise dwelling in the first place.

c) Approve as an open market house outside the boundary with standard conditions – this posed the greatest risk to the Council as it would approve an open market house in the countryside without any control in terms of occupancy or price.

It was recommended that the application be refused.

b) Taking advantage of the right to speak, the Local Member made the following comments:

· The application was for erecting a dwelling for a full-time agricultural worker

· The committee had decided to support the application in the previous meeting, but the officer had referred the application to a cooling off period

· The report suggested that there was no functional need for the applicant as a main agricultural worker to live on the site as one of the sons already lived on the site. The son worked full-time away from the farm and only helped with the paperwork.

· With the son working away from the farm, someone needed to be available day and night to look after the stock during a period of time that extended over six months. It was completely unreasonable to ask the son to do this – the applicant, as the main person who ran the farm, needed to be available

· The two houses at Uwchlaw'r Rhos had been sold separately to the farmland in 2018 and the business was not in a financial position to be able to buy the land and the house after renting for generations. The two houses had been sold separately, and neither of them were available to the business, to the farm or for the applicant to live in.

· This was a three-bedroom dwelling for an agricultural worker. They were a family of local Welsh-speaking people.

· There was a clear need for the applicant to live on the site. There was no other house available to him in Uwchlaw’r Rhos, thus the only option was to build a house for him and his family.

· Looking at the three options, this was not an application for an open market house, but a house for an agricultural worker. There was no intention to attempt to remove a condition from any permission in future. He asked the committee to support option b.

· The situation had not changed since the previous meeting; therefore, he asked the Committee to continue supporting the application.

c) It was proposed and seconded to approve the application contrary to the recommendation for the reason that nobody who lived on the farm worked on the farm – that there was no dwelling on the business site.

ch) An amendment was proposed to conduct a site visit so that members could assess the locations of the houses, the location of the proposed dwelling and its connection to the farm buildings, and to also visit the applicant's current home to measure the distance from there to the site.

The amendment was not seconded.

d) During the ensuing discussion, the following observations were made by Members:

· The business was now capable of building a house

· A worker was needed on the site

· Travelling was troublesome

· They were a local, Welsh-speaking family

RESOLVED: To approve the application (option b – approve with a standard planning condition for a rural enterprise dwelling, and other standard planning conditions) contrary to the recommendation