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• Demolition of the vacant Mother Hubbard restaurant building, fencing, unused overground tanks along with associated fencing/gates and concrete pads. • Construction of new single storey warehouse building with ancillary workshop, signage and underground firefighting water storage tank. • Relocation of containers, • Erection of new fencing and gates, • Provision of new car parking including disabled and EV charging spaces • New on-site wastewater treatment system and percolation area, • Landscaping • Associated site works. The development for which retention planning permission is sought consists of an existing fence
Core Refusal Reason
The proposed development represents an inappropriately scaled industrial use on unzoned agricultural land that fails to meet rural enterprise criteria and would be visually incongruous in the landscape.
Decision Maker's Conclusion
- The proposed warehouse and workshop (1,429sqm) vastly exceed the 200sqm scale threshold for small-scale rural enterprises defined in Table 9.1 and fail to demonstrate a specific social or economic need for a rural location.
- The development of a warehouse/depot on unzoned agricultural land would undermine the strategy of directing industrial uses to appropriately zoned lands in nearby towns and would set an undesirable planning precedent.
- The siting, scale, and industrial form of the proposed structure are considered visually obtrusive and incongruous within the rural landscape, failing to comply with design and clustering requirements of Objective RD O5.