Planning Permission

Hey ho, I suppose we shall get there in the end.

When Adrian applied for the Manager's job back in the summer of 2006, we were told that the Trust was seeking planning permission for the barns that are attached either side of the house. One is an old cow barn and the plans are for an office, toilets, crew room, sort of domestic stuff.

At the moment, the main office for the farm is in what is in reality my front room. All the people who come here end up in this office; the rest of the house is very small and we have no living room, just a single room about 12ft by 17 ft for everything including dining table and four chairs, dog beds and cat baskets. We have nowhere to sit in the evening other than the dining chairs and a stick chair, have to say most evenings all the chairs are occupied by cats anyway (we have six ) so you have to fight to be comfortable here.

The only toilet facilities for visitors is the little house in the big woods so to speak, a ty bach in Welsh and it is in the centre of my back garden. Very rustic and not great. When we have open days we have to rent porta-loos and now that we have lots of people with special needs, they use my downstairs loo as we also have no other hand washing facilities.



The other barn (we call it the stone barn) is set to be an interpretation centre and a dining area for sandwiches and drinks, nothing heavy in the catering line but just somewhere for visitors to sit that isn't in the rain. Did I tell you it rains a lot here? Well it does. It is in the stone barn that the "problem" with our planning permission lies.



So all of that was in 2006 as I say and we are still waiting for planning permission for the work so that we can start fund raising. With so many people coming here with special needs, we are desperate for the cow barn to be converted so that they all have the correct facilities and I can have my loo back. And my kitchen as the loo is just off there and you have to go through one to get to the other and the whole thing is just not suitable.



The problem with getting planning permission seems to be bats. Bats, that's all. We had to have a survey done to see whether bats are roosting in the stone barn. Costs an awful lot of money, more than a small charity trying to make it in a big charity world wants to pay out more than once.



So the "bat man" came along a couple of evenings in the summer of 2007 and he went away and we were told verbally at one point that all was well and we awaited the go ahead and nothing happened. Letters and phone calls and nearly two years later and still no planning permission. We have had a communication that informed us that after two years, there is now dissention between the National Park bat people and another group of bat people who cannot agree that the findings submitted two years ago are correct and they insist that we need another bat survey to gather more evidence as to how the bats go in, whether they roost in there (we were told verbally two years ago they didn't) and how we would be required to lessen the impact of the renovation to the bat population living in there that we were told two years ago we didn't have.



Last week a man finally came to see us, the third planning man who had been given the file. A very nice guy trying to sort it all out. However he also says we will have to have another bat survey or go for an appeal and we could lose it and it could cost a whole lot more than another bat survey. And by the way as we have applied for planning permission for the whole lot, we can't just do the toilets etc and leave the other barn. We would have to reapply for just the cow barn to be converted.



The Trust doesn't mind how many bat surveys we have but we really don't think we should be paying for more than one. However, it is going to be "Catch 22" isn't it? No tickee, no washee.



We either bow down or get nowhere. Without proper toilet facilities we cannot progress any further than we are now and that could mean the end of us.



The final decision isn't up to me of course, that's why we have Trustees.