Farmer occupancy rule waived for Highfield Farm at Pontrilas

Permission to build Highfield, at Highfield Farm near Pontrilas in the southwest of the county, was granted in 1969 on condition it was occupied by “persons employed locally in agriculture and their dependants”.

Seeking to have this formally dropped, owners Mr & Mrs D Bott claimed that while they met the condition when they bought the house in 1980 as they worked in poultry at the farm, following their retirement for health reasons 2006 this had ceased to be the case and remains so.

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Under planning law, a condition which can be shown to have been breached for over ten years ceases to be enforceable, and the planning authority can be asked to provide a “certificate of lawfulness” to this effect.

A sworn declaration by Mr Bott accompanying the couple’s application for this said they were unaware of the agricultural occupancy condition when they bought the house from his father-in-law, and that the condition “only recently came to light”.

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With no evidence to the contrary having been put forward, planning officer Tracey Meachen said the evidence supplied by the couple “is sufficiently precise and unambiguous to justify the grant of a certificate”.

She noted that the breach of the condition “is due in part to (its) wording that makes no provision for the change in circumstances of the occupier through being made a widow(er) or retiring”.

“Had provision been made, the occupier may not have breached the condition,” she said.