The Durrants team are celebrating an excellent win on behalf of their client this week after securing full planning permission for a rural workers dwelling in Rumburgh, East Suffolk.

The application was made in order to allow an engineering company to continue to operate their agricultural machinery maintenance business by living on site. Durrants Building Consultancy’s in-house architects provided the supporting plans and the planning team produced the supporting planning documentation, including the Planning, Design and Access Statement.

Policy WLP8.11 of the Waveney Local Plan sets a high threshold to allow new homes in the countryside for rural workers. Applications must demonstrate an essential functional need which cannot be met by other nearby housing. The question of functional need is often, as in this case, mistakenly interpreted as applying to maintaining the welfare of livestock, excluding agricultural support services. However, Durrants outlined in the planning statement and committee speech that this is a misconception, and that both local and national policy support housing for anyone who needs to live close to their place of work in the countryside, regardless of the nature of that work. In this case the company provides agricultural machinery maintenance services to 400 clients across East Anglia.

Durrants were recently invited to attend an event by CLA East to show how a 25 year old chicken shed was converted to a zero-carbon home. Nick Woolley and his wife Saffy shared with Durrants Principal Planner, Jonny Rankin, the challenges and successes they faced during the conversion process.

Planning permission initially came to life via a Class Q Prior Approval, which will be very familiar to Durrants clients. Class Q’s are a Building Consultancy mainstay, with several on the books at any one time.

The chicken shed in question benefitted from a southern elevation allowing for passive solar gain and a large bank of solar panels on the south-facing roof slope.

Having attended events at Woolley’s old HQ in Freckenham, I was aware of Nick’s advocacy for the Hockerton Housing project and the building principles therein. Having retrofitted the previous Old Rectory buildings, in speaking with Nick, I could sense the excitement at the opportunity to start from the ground up – literally – with the chicken shed. Some features we had the pleasure to view included:

1. 300mm thick floor concrete at 300mm, giving an overall ‘U’ value of 0.1*;
2. 300mm of floor to ceiling wall insulation, also giving an overall ‘U’ value of 0.1;
3. Triple glazed windows;
4. Epoxy resin wall ties (not steel) preventing thermal losses; and
5. 440mm of insulation under roofing sheets giving a ‘U’ value of 0.055.

Onsite generation is key to the success of the zero-carbon performing home and we were abvle to view the 75 solar panels (27kWh maximum energy production) and the 3 Tesla Powerwall batteries.

All heating is solar powered, delivered by underfloor heating – only required in colder months absence solar gain.

Mechanical Ventilation and Heat Recovery (MHVR) is something we are also employing for clients on some of our current planning applications and builds and we were able to view the Vent-Axia unit chosen by Nick and Saffy. The MHVR unit changes air throughout the building roughly every four hours, exchanging ‘old’ air whilst retaining up to 80% of the heat, heating the incoming air.

The consultation period for the ‘Housing in Clusters and Small Scale Residential Development in the Countryside Supplementary Planning Document’ (SPD) closed on Friday 5^thAugust.

The document seeks to provide clarity on the interpretation of the two relevant policies relating to housing in the countryside (i.e. outside of settlement boundaries, but within groups of other dwellings) – SCLP5.4 and WLP8.7. One of the main issues the Council has sought to address in the SPD is the definition of a ‘cluster’ or ‘settlement in the countryside’. Both policies allow for ‘infill’ development in such settlements, i.e. filling in obvious gaps in a continuous built up area.

Despite the local plans both being recently adopted, officer interpretation of the policies has been inconsistent, leading to some unfair decisions for applicants. Durrants represent numerous clients whose applications have been both approved and refused against these policies. Our letter to the Council highlighted some of the inconsistencies in their previous application of policy, and most importantly, some of areas in which the SPD could fail to avoid such issues in the future. These include the acceptable size and nature of a ‘gap’, what constitutes ‘continuous built up frontage’ and how development on one vs two sides of the road is treated. 

It is our view that the SPD in its current form will only add to the existing confusion, and that the preferable solution is for officers to decide applications in accordance with SCLP5.4 and WLP8.7, as these policies are both very clear and pro-development.

We have summarised the points made in our representations here and would encourage you to take a look at the SPD online.

• Neither the SPD nor the local plans contain any policies allowing settlements with development boundaries to grow – i.e. there is only allowance for infilling of gaps
• The definition of a ‘gap’ is still unclear. It appears that infilling a gap containing a garden or farm access is acceptable, but containing a ‘large’ field is not. This needs to be clarified and, importantly, justified.
• Confusion over ‘development on both sides’ as per the policy wording, which is contradicted by the diagrams in the SPD.
• No position over whether planning approved developments count towards the cluster. We argued in our letter that they absolutely should.
• We closed by drawing attention to a recent appeal decision on a house in the countryside, which East Suffolk lost due to their incorrect interpretation of their own policy.

No timescale has been given for the next phase of the consultation process, but Durrants will continue to engage with the process on behalf of our clients. Please do get in touch if you have a potential site that could be captured by these changes.

Jasmine Philpott, Planner

On 20^th July, the government announced that the Levelling Up Bill (see our article on this here) will be amended to place a new legal duty on water companies to upgrade treatment works by 2030 in an attempt to reduce water pollution.

Alongside this, Natural England are to introduce a Nutrient Mitigation Scheme, which will see the body develop woodland and wetland areas to offset nutrient pollution. Developers can then by nutrient credits to offset the impact of their proposals.

Though initial advice suggested the scheme would be in place by the autumn, it is now believed that this is in fact when Natural England will begin tendering for the new schemes.

The good news is that SME developers will be prioritised, and developers are still encouraged to provide their own mitigation solutions, with a commitment that Natural England will support, not hinder, such proposals.

This is a very positive step and a sign of swift action from the government. We are still awaiting an announcement from our local councils as to whether they plan to continue with the strategy they outlined in June (see our article on this here).

The Durrants planning team are pleased to have recently secured numerous planning consents on sites outside the catchments but within the authorities affected by the recent Natural England update – see our previous article on this here.

In a recent update seminar held by representatives of the Norfolk authorities, which Durrants attended, assurances were made that a permanent solution would be found by February 2023, with further information and strategies introduced to try to free up development in the meantime. 

We were pleased to hear that staff from the councils shared developers’ frustrations with the sudden nature of the announcements, as well as what appears to be a sensible plan to find a solution. In the short term, this includes producing a more detailed map of the catchments to identify any areas within them where development could go ahead, as well as providing their own nutrient calculator to replace the flawed one published by Natural England.

It was particularly positive that the authorities are meeting regularly to ensure consistency across the county, as well as with authorities elsewhere in the country who have successfully grappled with the problem, such as Cornwall Council.

We have however seen some inconsistencies in the approach adopted by officers, which tend to centre on foul drainage and each authority’s view on septic tanks and treatment plants. Despite this, we have achieved approvals for developments involving new overnight accommodation (the trigger for nutrient neutrality) in South Norfolk and are working on others in Breckland, the Broads and Broadland authorities.

Overall, councils are working positively with us on applications outside the catchment, and we are providing the information needed to unlock decisions, with a slight delay to the original determination date (generally a few weeks). We are therefore up to speed on the nuances between authorities and would therefore encourage applicants to get in touch with the team to discuss their proposals.

If your site falls within either of the catchments outlined on the maps below, brace yourself for a long wait for planning consent.

In March this year, Natural England suddenly announced that the Broads SAC (special area of conservation)/Ramsar site and the River Wensum SAC are in an unfavourable condition due to excessive nitrate and phosphate levels. Their announcement meant that any development proposals generating overnight accommodation within these catchments should not be decided unless it can be proven that the development will not impact on either of these sites. Unfortunately, this is currently impossible to do, as it relies on mitigation schemes which do not yet exist.

Any development that generates sewage will generate nitrates and phosphates, and this needs to be mitigated, either on-site through the creation of wetlands or woodlands, or off-site through large scale areas set aside for this purpose. As an example of on-site mitigation, a single dwelling could require around 2.5 acres of woodland or 0.05 acres of wetland to offset its nutrient impact.