Advice On Agricultural Workers Dwellings.

How We Approached The Project

We were approached by a client with an existing mixed farm looking to build a second dwelling on site to house an agricultural worker.

How We Achieved The Project

Every business is different and each one must be considered on its own merits when assessing the likelihood of success in obtaining planning permission for a farm or rural worker’s dwelling.

We spoke to the client about examples of recent planning applications that have been successful such as:

• Poultry manager’s dwellings on existing and new units
• Second dwelling on a livestock farm, which comprises pedigree cattle and sheep
• Equestrian enterprise, including the breeding and training of horses

The latest national government guidance to planning authorities is broadly supportive of secondary dwellings, especially where this eases succession. While planning policy is different for each local authority the main points we considered when applying for the worker’s dwelling in this instance included:

1. Showing the functional need for a dwelling relating to a full-time worker.

Principally, the case for planning lies in establishing there is a genuine need for someone to live on the holding seven days a week. The first step, therefore, in forming the application was to understand the background to the business.

It was vital to fully understand the day-to-day activities and all other scenarios that required the worker to be living onsite out of normal working hours, such as emergencies.

A planning decision may have hung on demonstrating that the viability and existence of the business would be threatened if a worker could not reside onsite.
In this scenario It was for animal health and welfare issues when lambing and calving.

2. Demonstrated clear evidence that the business has been planned on a sound financial basis.

The local authority will usually require the business to have been profitable at least once during the past year three years.

Therefore, we carried out a full analysis of the past three years’ accounts for the client to understand, and be able to demonstrate, the business viability.

As there were fluctuations in the accounts, due to an investment, we also generated plans and budgets to show the business was on a sound financial basis going forwards.

We included within our application:

• Farm accounts, for most recent three years and budgets
• Investments in buildings, infrastructure, livestock
• Staff wages

3. Can other accommodation fulfil the functional need

We also carried out a comprehensive search of the residential market to check whether other properties are available to rent or purchase within the immediate surrounding area. We also considered whether there were any buildings that could be converted on the site. We determined that neither of these options were available for the client.

Making The Case

We generated an Agricultural Justification and Planning Statement alongside the normal planning documents (which were carried out by our planning colleagues) to include a Design and Access Statement. All of these documents were the submitted to the local authority. The financial information was submitted separately on a confidential basis.

Permission

We were very pleased to obtain permission for the client for a residential dwelling for a farm worker. As is often the case with any planning permissions for rural workers dwellings, the permission was granted with an Agricultural Occupancy Condition on the new dwelling. In some cases there is also a condition that the dwelling is also tied to the holding it relates to, but this did not happen in this particular case.