11/00713/F - Borough Council of King's Lynn & West Norfolk

The applicant believes that this would make the properties unappealing to normal residential
buyers.
However, the proposed conditions, in omitting reference to holiday accommodation and not
being used as a permanent place of residence, would allow the occupant to reside on-site
permanently provided that they owned another property somewhere else. There is no
obligation upon the occupier to reside in their other property for any length of time or indeed
at all. In essence, the units would become permanent places of residence. The requirement
to own a second residence and be a member of the golf club etc may make the units less
attractive to parts of the open market but not to all, for example second home owners.
CONCLUSION
When an applicant makes an application to remove or modify conditions, the planning
authority can take the opportunity to review all the conditions attached to the consent. It is
not bound to approve or refuse the application in the way it has been submitted.
In this case, it is arguable that it was not necessary to control the occupancy of all the units.
In particular, the 7 units in the large barn and the one in the smaller existing building to the
rear of the farmhouse, for the reasons described in the body of the report above.
However, there remains a need to control the occupancy of the new build units, particularly
as these constitute the bulk of the units approved and are all in the countryside. The
proposed changes put forward by the applicant do not, it is suggested, ensure that sufficient
control is retained over the use of these new-build units. They could still be used as
permanent places of residence, although with certain obligations upon the occupier.
Allowing the conditions to be varied in this way would effectively allow a housing estate of 25
dwellings in a location not considered acceptable.
The need to balance the protection of the countryside against the need for continued
economic development is recognised. Removing the condition on 8 of the units in existing
converted buildings should help the applicant to achieve some sales although it will not help
with the unsold new build units already constructed. It is the view of your officers that
relaxing the conditions as suggested would be at variance with established policies for
protecting the countryside and, had they been proposed when the application was made, the
recommendation to the Board would have been to refuse the development.
The recommendation is therefore to approve the application but only to remove the
occupancy condition from the 8 units created by the conversion of existing buildings. It is
proposed to retain the condition unchanged in relation to the new-build units.
As the development is not completed, it is necessary to ensure that some of the conditions
from the original consent remain enforceable, which is why they appear below.
RECOMMENDATION:
APPROVE subject to the imposition of the following condition(s):
1 Condition The development hereby permitted shall be begun before the expiration of
three years from the date of this permission.
11/00302/F Development Control Board
25 July 2011
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