The site we purchased had an interesting planning history.

The land has a cottage, a stone barn and a derelict stone barn. The cottage is situated right on the edge of the land nearest the road. The site itself falls within the Wye Valley Area of Outstanding Natural Beauty (AONB) and is accessed from a bend on a B road that has some restrictions in visibility.

Previous owners had applied for permission for converting the two barns to separate dwellings and had been refused. They then applied for permission to convert one barn to a separate dwelling this looked problematic and the application was changed to conversion to a holiday let. The Planning department seemed to be satisfied with this but the Highways department raised concerns about increased vehicle movements. Rather than negotiating the previous owners pushed for a decision and the application was refused.

This is the point at which we become involved.

As we were looking at a fairly horrendous history the first thing we did prior to committing to purchase was to discuss the matter with a planning consultant. This proved to be an excellent investment and Julian Dolman proved to be an invaluable help to us.

We knew we were not able to purchase the site with any preconditions on being granted planning permission so it was all or nothing. Our main question was to ask for an estimation of the probability of being granted permission to build a new house replacing the cottage. It is also worth noting that the cottage is small so the new house had to be much bigger. Given the poor location of the cottage relative to the whole site it was also decided to try to place the new house outside of the existing curtilage of the cottage.

We got enough of a positive feeling to take a risk. Our hope was to build a bigger house in a better site and also to convert one of the barns for non-agricultural use.

The first piece of advice was to tackle the house first and then worry about the barn. Julian also recommended that prior to any contact with the planners we came up with a complete package, balanced so that it would address the majority of concerns which would most probably be raised.

So we set to work to produce a design which was larger but not too large but most importantly a design which fitted into the landscape. Initially Julian acted as a foil for the work that we did with Neill our architect. There were occasions where this was frustrating but with hindsight it was lucky this work was internal rather than in direct view of the planners.

When we had a design ready which seemed to fit with the local plan and Julian and Neill's experiences of the best way forward Julian arranged to see the planners. We did not go to that meeting to allow scope for Julian to negotiate more freely. The feed back we got was encouraging in that the points raised were more to do with the detail rather than the overall intention.

We then spent some time addressing the concerns raised, including creating a detailed landscaping plan, and then sent the application in. At the same time we were preparing the neighbours about what was happening and sent all of them a copy of our plans so they had facts rather than hearsay. This worked so well we actually got one of our neighbours to write in to the planners in favour of the scheme.

Then we waited…..

The result was an approval under the planning officer's delegated powers so it didn't even have to go to committee – we were over the moon! We did have a whole host of conditions to work through – many of which had to be satisfied before we could start but none were too onerous.

Having got approval on the main body of the house we then decided to apply for the conversion of the barn to office space to be used solely by the occupants of the house. This again, whilst slow, went through on delegated powers.

Once we had the two basic structures approved we then applied for permission to build basements under both. In the house this was under the whole building to accommodate a double garage and store rooms and in the barn this was just under a new extension to provide an additional room. Again both were approved without need to go to committee.

At this point we believe we have used our luck up for this project!