Eastleigh Borough Council: Darryl Howells has secured a Certificate of Lawfulness of an existing use or development (CLEUD) for a site, to be used as an agricultural farm with associated buildings for storage of equipment and machinery.
A CLEUD is a legal document issued by the Local Planning Authority to authorise an existing use. The planning judgement is not based on subjective judgement but evidence, namely in this case whether the proposed use had occurred on the site for 10 years prior to the submission of the CLEUD application.
Darryl suggested this course of action to the client as doing do so has established 2 lines of strategy. The first is the authorised use of the land as a CLEUD has the same weight in planning law as a permission, so neither Local Planning Authority nor owner are unclear what is the authorised use of the land.
The second is the options now available to the client for the redevelopment of the site using the permitted development rights. Under the General Permitted Development Order, an applicant can change the use of land to another type of development and the tests to achieve that change are simpler than if planning permission was sought in the usual manner with planning justification and arguments. Authorising the use of the land to be agricultural, allows the change of use to dwelling houses or to a flexible commercial use to include shops, financial and professional services, business, restaurants, warehousing, hotels or assembly and leisure uses.
If you have land and its authorised use is unclear, or the options available to how the development of the site could be facilitated, then please contact Pure Town Planning for a free initial appraisal.