Today we finally went to talk to a planning officer, motivated by a couple of possible plots which have come onto the market in roughly the right area for us, but in conservation areas. More on conversation with the planning officer in a moment. First a bit of an update...
We seem to have found our first area of compromise within our occasionally conflicting list of aims and criteria for a site. In some ways it's a big departure, but mostly it makes a lot of sense. It certainly feels possible, which is definitely progress! The original ideal scenario was to have have home, workshop, treatment room, kiln and coppice in the same place; not just any old place but a place right on the edge of town, so that clients could easily get to it and we could get into town on foot or electric mobility scooter. This is a lovely idea, but frankly impossible. As discussed in previous blogs, this would mean a whole load of building outside the DDB (Defined Development Boundary), which would be highly unlikely to get planning permission even if we could find what we thought was a good site. The planning officer (PO) confirmed that anything residential outside the DDB would be refused unless directly linked to an agricultural need to be there. In any case, we have only seen one site that ticked most of the boxes for this plan, and that never reached auction.
