Savills rural planning team in Taunton were asked to provide planning advice on the development potential of the farm and to ultimately achieve planning consent for a new residential development to sell to a developer.
Additionally, Savills was asked to achieve planning and listed building consent to convert the barns for retention by the client in order to achieve the maximum financial return.
The site lies in open countryside where there is a presumption against new residential development. To obtain the consents we made a strong case in relation to national policy centring around the council’s lack of sufficient housing supply, the benefits to the rural economy, the environmental benefits associated with removing the dilapidated farm buildings, and the social benefits associated with bringing new families to the village. We also took a very detailed and sensitive approach to the listed barns and presented a well researched and sympathetic case for renovation and conversion which was accepted by the conservation officer.
We submitted a hybrid application so we could achieve an outline consent for the eight new-build residential units. This could then be sold to a developer and enable them to apply for the detailed house type designs that best suit their model, in tandem with a detailed design for the barn conversions to enable us to demonstrate the conversions would be sensitive. This hybrid approach also enabled us to structure the S106 legal agreement to allow the two developments to be separated through the sale process and implemented separately.
We made full use of ‘vacant building credits’ to minimise the S106 liability and delivered zero affordable homes by applying the government’s new policy to support the viability of smaller housing schemes by raising the threshold for affordable housing to 10 units. We also negotiated a ‘trade off’ to deliver a commuted payment to support the village hall in lieu of a payment to the LPA for off-site affordable housing contributions, which not only reduced the S106 liability further but generated more local support.
The development site is now sold and the money reinvested into the farm.