The Accidental Smallholder Forum
Smallholding => Buildings & planning => Topic started by: Soundman32 on January 04, 2019, 09:11:51 pm
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We are looking at buying a farmhouse that has 8 acres attached to it. It's divided up into 3 fields (dry stone walls dividing each), 1000ft up on moorland.
The land was used for grazing the previous owners (personal) horses and is currently used to graze a local farmers sheep.
We want to buy the property and just have 'big gardens'. We've got ideas about planting loads of trees (for heating and fruit), bee-hives etc, but no farm animals or 'for-profit' agriculture.
Do we need planning permission to become a 'non-farm'?
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A change of use for the land will be needed.
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A change of use for the land will be needed.
Yes that is correct but so long as you don't make it too obvious, like a big swimming pool or tennis courts, and no one complains (which is unlikely!) then the planners will never know. In fact fruit trees and beekeeping are agriculture anyway. 8 acres is an awful lot of grass to keep tidy, so you might find you let someone cut it for hay, or keep some sheep on. In which case you are not really changing the use at all.