A FARMER is celebrating after a successful appeal to overrule a planning application refusal of eight dwellings on his farmland.

During the last banking crisis in 2007 and 2008, farmer and businessman Martin Herring, set his workers on the repair and refurbishment of old farm buildings on his Aislaby West Farm, near Yarm.

The building project avoided the need to lay off some of his work force, and left him with a set of restored traditional buildings which he had no real farming use for.

In 2019 Prism Planning applied on his behalf to have the restored buildings converted into dwellings.

Stockton Council refused, citing the repairs as being unauthorised and the location as being unsustainable, despite the passage of more than four years.

This week a government planning inspector has overruled the council’s decision, allowing the buildings to be converted to provide eight new houses. The decision followed an informal hearing in February.

Speaking on behalf of Mr Herring, Steve Barker, Managing Director of Prism Planning said: “It’s not very often that a farmer seeks to restore and repair old buildings that he doesn’t have a particular use for – but in this case Mr Herring presented us with what we thought was the perfect opportunity to carry out a sensitive conversion scheme that met all government directives and requirements.

“The fact that he did the initial work during the last recession, and that we get the new decision in what is now undoubtedly a new recession has added poignancy and shows us that with everything going on, sometimes good news stories do emerge.

“It was a shame that we couldn’t convince the officers in the council earlier in the process, but the conversion of outbuildings often challenges planning officers and this isn’t the first appeal of this nature that we have had to fight for our clients.”

Reasons for approval stated in the appeal document were: “The appellant’s grandfather bought the farm in 1927 and it has been within his family since that time. The agricultural buildings around the courtyard fell into disuse, particularly since the farm became purely arable by the end of 2001.

“Work within the courtyard began following a routine visit from the Health and Safety Executive in 2005 who stated that the buildings, having deteriorated in condition, needed to be made safe or demolished.

“The very particular circumstances of this case include the long-term history of the appellant’s family with the farm, the necessity to carry out work on the buildings driven by the Health and Safety Executive and the substantially similar style, mass and position of the current buildings to those originally present.

“There is no evidence that either the new or the historical buildings have been used for any purpose other than for agriculture or have been purposefully left vacant.”