Barn Conversion - Canterbury, Kent

[Leon 96]

Hi All,

 

Based in the South East, in a seaside town called Whitstable, which falls under Canterbury City Council. Back in 2022, I purchased a commercial barn with the dream of converting it into a home.

When I first bought it, I (naively!) thought the planning process would be fairly straightforward under permitted development rights. Unfortunately, that wasn’t the case,  the barn was considered to be curtilage listed, which meant a much longer and more complicated route through planning.

After a couple of years of back-and-forth emails, refusals, research, and learning far more about the planning system than I ever thought I would, I’m happy to say we finally got permission granted this May for the change of use from a commercial workshop to a residential dwelling.

This will be a self-build project, and I’m just starting to look into materials and suppliers with the hope of kicking things off before the end of the year. That said, there are still a few more surveys and bits of planning bureaucracy to sort through first.

No doubt I’ll be here soon asking for advice (and probably pulling my hair out along the way), but I’m really looking forward to learning from everyone and sharing progress as things move forward.

 

Thanks for having me,

Leon

[Thorfun]

nice! welcome, congratulations and good luck!

[LSB]

Check if you have CIL in your area.

Good luck and welcome

 

[MikeSharp01]

They do have CIL in Canterbury so do that before you start any building work of any sort. 

[Leon 96]

Thanks for the advice. I've already obtained CIL exemption 😁

[Alan Ambrose]

Be careful re planning amendments and CIL. But congrats on getting the permission - and there’s wealth of info here on just about any self build subject. A picture of the current building maybe?

[Gus Potter]

On 30/10/2025 at 15:10, Leon 96 said:

I’m happy to say we finally got permission granted this May for the change of use from a commercial workshop to a residential dwelling.

Welcome to Build Hub. This is a massive step forward. 

 

You'll get lots of help here as and when you need it. 

 

These type of projects are fascinating, even just from an engineering aspect and how you evaluate the existing building in terms of what you can retain structurally. 

 

Photographs and a couple of concept drawing will encourage targeted advice from members. 

 

Main thing is to enjoy the design process.

 

 

[Leon 96]

Here are a few pictures of the current condition. It’s an L-shaped building made up of the barn and a long block section that was previously used as offices.

The office section isn’t in bad shape, just a bit dated but the main focus to start with will be the barn side.

 

A laser scan was carried out on Friday, so I’m now waiting for the completed measured survey report.

 

The barn currently has an asbestos tile roof, which will need to be replaced with clay tiles. Since clay tiles are considerably heavier, the existing beams will need repair, reinforcement, or replacement. I’ve reached out to a few structural engineers to assess the load-bearing capacities of the beams and walls, but haven’t had much luck getting responses so far. One company did suggest waiting until the measured survey is done before they take a look, so hopefully they’ll be happy to come out once that’s ready.