Appeal 6003253

The appeal is dismissed.

An application for costs is made by [name] against Torridge District Council. This is the subject of a separate decision.

The Planning Practice Guidance states that permitted development rights are a national grant of planning permission which allow certain building works and changes of use to be carried out without having to make a planning application. Permitted development rights are subject to conditions and limitations to control impacts and to protect local amenity.

Class Q of Part 3 of Schedule 2 to the General Permitted Development Order (the GPDO) says that the change of use of a building that is part of an established agricultural unit or a former agricultural building and any land within that building’s curtilage to a residential use, together with reasonably necessary building operations, is permitted development.

Paragraph Q1 of the GPDO sets out circumstances where development is not permitted, including part (p) where the building does not have suitable existing access to a public highway. This is the main matter in dispute between the parties. In all other respects, the Council is content that the proposal complies with Class Q, and I find no reason to disagree.

I therefore consider the main issue to be whether the proposal would amount to permitted development.

In a rural countryside location, the appeal building is isolated from other development and is positioned in a field this is some considerable distance from the adopted highway it would connect with.

In that context, it is claimed that a connecting access track had been used for many years and was properly installed in December 2024. However, even if the March 2025 google imagery was captured at some other time, photographs supplied by the Council from January 2025 do not corroborate this assertion. While the Council has not provided photographic evidence at the time of its site visit for this proposal, it nevertheless stated in its officer report that no access track was evident. The appellant’s photographs of a form of track in situ are undated and do not provide any assurance it was installed prior to the application being made. Furthermore, the plans indicate there would be a proposed hardware access track with central grass strip meeting an existing access gate, rather than identifying any existing track. My observations were that the route of the track closest to the access with the highway does not reflect that shown on the plans. Overall, the evidence lacks clarity.

While the GPDO does not define what constitutes a “suitable” access or specify the standard that must be achieved, it is reasonable to assume it should be of sufficient quality to support normal day‐to‐day residential use. In this case, however, the evidence indicates that on the balance of probabilities and prior to the application, there was no identifiable or consistent access track between the appeal building and the public highway that could reasonably be regarded as suitable for residential vehicular traffic.

In any case, and notwithstanding the above, at my visit I noticed that sections of this track were very soft and muddy underfoot. Here, displaced stone chippings did not appear to provide any solid or reliable access arrangement between the highway and the appeal building. There were also signs that past surface water pooling had accumulated in and around the track. Furthermore, some other sections closer to the appeal building were barely noticeable under grass. Given these ground conditions, I did not attempt to drive my vehicle to the appeal building for fear I might have been unable to complete the manoeuvre. Consequently, the existing access from the appeal building to the public highway is unsuitable, which fails Q1 (p) of the GPDO.

The Council’s officer report highlights that no extant permission exists to provide a track. In response to this, it is asserted that Schedule 2, Part 6, Class B of the GPDO permits such works without the need for the Council to engage any further. However, even if the track were to be considered reasonably necessary for its use in connection with broader land maintenance, rather than the appeal building, the Council is concerned that permitted development rights prohibit development within [address]. It is however not appropriate for me to determine the lawfulness or otherwise of any of the aforementioned alleged works that may have taken place to the entrance.

In that respect, the Council’s reference to another permission at this entrance point merely provides context to what appears to be an evolving access arrangement, which is related to this appeal. That said, it has not been shown that a fallback on these particular permitted development rights can be relied upon to support this scheme. Additionally, possible future access works would not meet the tests set out in Q1 (p) of the GPDO.

I have paid regard to the various case law extracts referenced by the appellant. However, it has not been convincingly demonstrated any of these would lead me to reach a different conclusion.

The support for the proposal is acknowledged, though my considerations are limited to compliance or otherwise with the GPDO. In respect of access connections, interested parties have provided little substantive evidence the proposal would comply with the relevant part of the GPDO.

Taking all matters into consideration, based on what has been presented to me and my own observations, the appeal proposal fails to demonstrate compliance with Q1 (p) of the GPDO. As such, it does not constitute permitted development and is therefore dismissed.