Plans to turn giant shed into holiday lets rejected

Twm Owen, local democracy reporter

A bid to turn a giant shed built just five years ago into holiday lets, has failed for the second time.

Homeowner Lyndon Hawkins wanted to divide the outbuilding used as a workshop and for storage, and that stretches for eight metres, into two holiday lets.

He’d argued there had been an outbuilding within the garden of his semi-detached cottage on Pen Y Wern Road, Penperlleni for 70 years and as part of his appeal against the refusal of planning permission produced an ordnance survey map from 1971 clearly showing a structure.

Streetview images

He also provided independent inspector, Zoe Baxter, who was appointed by Planning and Environment Decisions Wales to consider the appeal, with Google Streetview images for 2009 and 2011 showing an outbuilding adjacent to the southwestern boundary of his garden.

But Ms Baxter said the planning permission, granted by Monmouthshire County Council in 2020 for rebuilding the outbuilding, demonstrated it was of a “slightly different shape and position within the site” despite being of a similar size to the earlier building.

As a result she found the original outbuilding “no longer exists” and had been replaced with the building approved in 2020. Her report said the council was right to refuse planning permission in line with its policy on converting buildings in the countryside for residential use.

The policy requires buildings to have been used for their intended purpose “for a significant period of time” and states “particularly close scrutiny will be given to proposals relating to those less than 10 years old, especially where there has been no change in activity on the unit.”

Storage

Ms Baxter’s report stated the building was still being used for storage and as a workshop when she visited, on May 1, and explained the 10 year guide is intended to prevent people gaining planning permission for new buildings for a purpose allowed under the policy and then seeking to convert the use to one that isn’t normally permitted.

She wrote in her report: “Although I am not suggesting this is the case in the scheme before me, Policy H4(e) seeks to prevent applicants circumventing the strict control over development in the countryside by acquiring planning permission on the basis a new building will be used for a purpose which complies with countryside policy but intending to convert it to purpose that would not.”

She also said Mr Hawkins had failed to provide sufficient details on the private drainage system proposed and how it would manage wastewater effluent or organic materials discharging directly or indirectly into the catchments of the rivers Usk and Wye.