Journey of a Barn: Planning Permission

In the beginning

Rich had been browsing the internet and keeping his eyes open for a "project" for some considerable time. He found this barn by pure chance on the internet and visited it a couple of times without me - he didnt want me wearing rose tinted glasses before he had checked a few things out! However, on my first visit unfortunately the glasses did come out and I fell in love with it.

The barn itself sits in just under half an acre of land. It is a limestone barn and the attached "buildings" are corregated iron and wood. These will come down completely and be rebuilt in limestone, but the barn will stay as much as possible with original features.

Firstly

We had to discuss with our girls what we were contemplating as it was going to affect them quite considerably -well living in a caravan for a year or so wasn't quite what they were used to! Em was ok as she is pretty independent but it was going to be more difficult for Amy as she hadn't at that point passed her driving test. However the week before we moved in December 2009 she passed her test which meant we had another car to buy but at least everyone was mobile.

We made arrangements to put our caravan on the Greenhill Leisure Park at Bletchingdon for the interim period until we could move our caravan on to our land at the barn. We also stay for odd nights with family and friends and, because we got withdrawal symptoms from not being down at our caravan in Warmwell, we had a weekend down at Weymouth

Sunday, 2 May 2010

Planning Permission

Although we were buying the barn with planning permission, it was due to run out in 6 months time and for our mortgage we needed a minimum of 2 years on it. This meant a delay in purchase as the family we were buying it from had to re-apply for planning permission and before they could do this a bat survey and flood risk assessment had to be obtained. Luckily the only batty thing on site was me and the flood risk was low so the planning permission went in and was officially granted on the 14 December 2009.