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Oh how long ago that last post seemed. So a quick recap. Planning put in April 23rd 2019. In September we went for non-determination to the planning inspectorate, fairly confident as a similar property a few plots up had been approved with a surprisingly similar design. We knew the approx. waiting time for the planning inspectorate was 6 months but as we'd lost the winter anyway, what did we have to lose? The site visit from the inspectorate was arranged for 24th March....... Yep, that was cancelled by the lockdown! Finally we get our site inspection 18th May. We did what we were told - opened the gate, let him wander round by himself and off he toddled. We got the refusal on Thursday. The architect was furious but to be honest, I was so fed up by that stage, any answer was better than nothing. There is no appeal of course and apparently because we are more than a year since the application went in, we are unable to get a free go with the next planning application. The architect is drawing up a second design with no charge - that is the contract that we had so good news on that front. So we are back to square one. We may as well go back to the drawing board and re-think exactly what we want from scratch. It will have to be a chalet bungalow to reduce volume but I know we can easily lose a bedroom without causing us an issue. The journey starts again but we are perilously close to not being able to fulfil the dream of a nice house here! We are getting older and will need a mortgage to build. We are borderline now over the affordability of the mortgage because of the short repayment period that we will be forced into so all a bit doom and gloom right now.