Justice indeed for agricultural dwelling

Bloomfields are delighted to report that they won an appeal for an agricultural dwelling to support a mixed livestock farm in the Weald area.  What should have been a relatively straightforward ‘relocation’ case for the Council to determine, based on Bloomfields having already achieved the principle of a dwelling to support an established enterprise, turned into an unnecessarily tricky operation.

The size of the proposed agricultural dwelling became a bone of contention, which led to a refusal on perceived harm on impact.  Bloomfields submitted a second application for a slightly smaller unit with the intention that an agreeable position could be reached with the Council without the need to go to appeal.  Regrettably, despite multiple chances set out by the applicant to the Council to determine the second application on time and avoid the need to appeal the first application, the Council called our client’s bluff and an appeal was lodged for the first application.

Unreasonably, the Council then decided that they wanted to re-query whether the functional need for the dwelling existed (a clearly desperate attempt to try and introduce further reasons to defend the appeal), and somewhat to the Council’s evident frustration the consultant the Council appointed supported the Bloomfields case.

Rather than swallow their pride, the Council doubled down and, despite having advised historically that they were going to approve the second application, unbelievably the Council refused the second case without reasonable justification.

The applicant and Bloomfields geared up to launch a second appeal with a cost application, confident in their position that the second appeal would be allowed – but before being able to advance this, in a most timely fashion, the first appeal results were in:  appeal allowed.  The client is delighted they can build the originally proposed dwelling.