Creating a wheelchair adaptable bungalow in Warwickshire

Our journey to receive planning permission near a listed building in the conservation area

As of yesterday we have planning permission for a wheelchair adaptable bungalow set behind our neighbour's property in the far corner of our garden - our current house is grade II listed, set in ~1.5 acres in the conservation area and within the village Built Up Area Boundary - we are very fortunate to have lived there for 24 years (we are still 1st generation villagers but not newcomers!)  I hope its helpful to share our experience navigating to planning approval for a backfill self-build bungalow in the curtilage of a listed building within a conservation area.

Its taken us 18 months from "how about this idea..." to planning permission being granted (& we are in the fortunate position of already having the land)

Here are key things that have helped us...

- Gather knowledge - visit the Swindon NSBRC / NEC shows, go to the talks, browse here on Buildhub, ask questions

- Identify your needs vs wants (for us this was bungalow, blend in to rural landscape, agreeable to neighbour, wheelchair adaptable, garage, efficient but not PH certified...)

- Do some initial floor-plan designs and get input from others - for us the wheelchair requirements significantly influenced the design & we asked the architect to make suggestions and challenge the layout we came to him with

- Get a high level budget together and figure out what type of self-builder you are going to be (turn-key, self-manage, self-manage+ etc)

- Engage with a couple of potential structure suppliers (whatever your build method may be) - they are a big chunk of the cost but can also have suggestions to improve the design

- Read the neighbourhood plan and council core strategy - identify all the points that support your proposal

- Assistance from forum members like @ETC were really helpful (thanks!) and enabled us to DIY our planning and heritage PreApps to identify officer concerns

- Engage neighbours, Parish Council & Ward Councillor early & keep them updated

- If your plans are controversial flush out the objections and try to find adjustments to mitigate - you might not satisfy everyone but you are trying and can demonstrate this

- If you have a difficult application as we did then IMHO you need a planning consultant as well as architect (could be same firm, we used separate)

- If the planning officer is minded to refuse then you need to get the application 'called in' to the planning committee*

* Currently, applications can be called to committee by the ward councillor (although this is due to change for small applications).

In our case the listed features are all at the front and we were able to design so that the street scene & frontage were unaffected (the bungalow can't be seen from the public road and no access changes required) - this is a good start but 'harm to the setting' is still an issue to overcome and the weighting of 'less than substantial harm' is so broad that most things fall in this category.  The bungalow was replacing a tarmac tennis court and is substantially smaller footprint so some surface water management advantages & counted as developed to some extent.

For those who have not been to a planning meeting - it is an experience, fortunately many councils stream their meetings on Youtube so you can get a feel for how they run.

Each speaker for the planning meeting must register in advance and you can send in visuals (in advance) to be shown while you are speaking (this was very helpful both when speaking and to prompt & handle questions from councillors) - details seem to vary by council

We were very fortunate to have support from the Parish Council, nearest neighbour and ward councillor and they all spoke in support at the meeting - I doubt we would have gained approval without that level of support.  As applicant, supporting neighbour and planning consultant we had 3 minutes total to speak - it needs to be well planned & rehearsed to get all your points across in that time!

The key issue was the conservation officer's assessment of harm to the setting of the listed building - our application used their suggestions on external appearance, made changes to address each of the concerns they raised in the preapp response (show we are reducing/minimising harm), showed the location is not out of keeping with the historic pattern, the listed building is still set in appropriate grounds for its status but even so the harm was still considered to be there and the planning officer's recommendation was still for refusal.

We collectively made our cases that the level of harm wasn't as high and highlighted the benefits leaning heavily on core strategy and neighbourhood plan supporting points.

The councillors then asked us and then the planning officer lots of questions before debating and then making a proposal to grant which was seconded and voted through.

So for us end of one chapter and the start of the next which no doubt will have just as many ups and downs!