Tales from the Front Line

Planning is probably the single most frequent issue when buying a country house

by George Wade
on October 12, 2009 in Country Search

I can barely think of the last time we acted for a client buying a country house when planning hasn’t been an issue at some point during the purchase process. We have recently had an incident where a property we were about to start bidding on failed to have any of the planning consents that it was advertised to have; sure permission had been granted for a large extension and the conversion of a barn to staff accommodation, but it had all expired. Luckily we found this out early on in the process and before bidding, but how annoying, let alone expensive, would it be to have got further down the line only to find out they had expired. In the past, when a planning consent was granted most had a 5 year window in which work had to be commenced, however a number of years ago this was reduced to 3, which has caught a few people out on both sides of the fence! Planning policy can change at both national and local level, sometimes over a relatively short period, and therefore you can never guarantee to simply be given the same consent again. If nothing else, before buying a house – check the planning, past, current and future!