A Delamere Class Q appeal to turn a barn into a home has failed over missing drawings, even after the applicant overcame the council’s argument that a farm-use condition blocked the conversion.
Mr William Connors wanted to create a three-bedroom dwelling at Fishpool Farm, on Fishpool Road. Cheshire West and Chester Council argued that an existing planning condition prevented reliance on permitted development rights.
Inspector N Unwin rejected that interpretation. But in a decision issued on 25th September 2026, the Inspector dismissed the appeal because the evidence did not establish what building work the scheme would require.
The condition was not the barrier the council claimed
The Delamere Class Q appeal centred on condition 3 of permission 24/01021/S73, granted through an earlier appeal. It required the agricultural building to be used solely for agricultural purposes incidental to the associated farm land, and not for another trade or business.
The council read that as excluding the proposed residential use. Mr Connors argued that its purpose was to prevent other trading or business activities, not a home.
The Inspector examined the wording and context. A condition can remove permitted development rights without naming the relevant legislation, but an intention to do so must be clear.
Here, the reference to another trade or business was significant. It was not a restriction on every other use, and Class Q already existed when the later permission was granted.
The Inspector concluded that the condition:
“does not specifically restrict the permitted development right”
That was a finding about this condition and this permission. It was not a ruling that agricultural-use conditions can never prevent a Class Q conversion.
The missing drawings that defeated the Delamere Class Q appeal
Winning that argument still left the applicant needing to establish that the physical works fell within Class Q. The Delamere Class Q appeal therefore turned from condition interpretation to the adequacy of the submitted plans.
A proposed floor plan had been submitted, but the Inspector recorded:
“there is an absence of elevations and sections”
The floor plan identified some walls to be retained, removed or built. Most external walls, however, were not identified in a way that showed what would happen to them.
That left the Inspector unable to establish the extent of replacement work. Replacing the whole roof and all the walls would go beyond the permitted operations, but the available drawings did not allow a reliable assessment of whether that was what the proposal involved.
The application form said no extension was proposed. Without elevations, the Inspector could not confirm that the scheme would stay within the relevant dimensional limits either.
This was therefore an evidential failure, not a positive finding that the barn necessarily required rebuilding.
No approval for the proposed home
The distinction between conversion and rebuilding, discussed in Hibbitt, remained decisive despite the applicant’s success on the condition.
Because the Inspector could not establish that the development qualified under Class Q, the Delamere Class Q appeal failed before the separate prior-approval matters needed to be considered.
The earlier permission made the wording more important
The agricultural-use condition was not an ancient restriction whose purpose had become impossible to trace. It appeared on permission 24/01021/S73, granted following an earlier appeal, at a time when Class Q was already part of the GPDO.
That context helped the Inspector. If the intention had been to exclude all non-agricultural permitted development, the condition could have said so. Instead, it prohibited use by another “trade or business”. The Inspector read those words alongside the reason for the condition, which referred to amenity and protection of the open countryside, and concluded that the restriction was aimed at particular commercial activity rather than every alternative use authorised by the GPDO.
The decision draws on a well-established line of authority. Dunoon Developments shows that wording which merely limits the use granted by a permission does not necessarily remove separate development-order rights. Dunnett Investments confirms that exclusion can be express or implied, but the condition read in context must clearly show the intention. Lazari Properties and Trump International reinforce the need to read planning conditions objectively and as a whole.
One Class Q test was satisfied
The Delamere application was not deficient in every respect. The proposed three-bedroom single-storey dwelling was capable of meeting the nationally described space standard. But passing that test did not cure the missing information about the structure itself. Planning Geek’s Class Q guide sets out the current conversion and building-operation limits.
That is what makes the Delamere Class Q appeal outcome more striking. The applicant won the difficult argument over whether the condition barred Class Q and could also demonstrate adequate internal space, yet the appeal still failed because the submitted drawings did not show enough for the Inspector to decide whether the physical works stayed within the right.
The prior-approval issues were never reached
Because the Delamere proposal failed the Class Q limitations at Q.1, the Inspector did not go on to decide the separate prior-approval matters under Q.2. The dismissal therefore says nothing about whether transport, noise, contamination, flooding, location or the other applicable prior-approval considerations would ultimately have been acceptable.
Nor did the Inspector find that conversion of this barn was impossible. The problem was evidential: the submitted package did not show clearly enough what would remain, what would be replaced and whether any works projected beyond the permitted limits. A better-documented proposal would still have to be assessed on its own plans and evidence.
The Planning Inspectorate appeal page provides the official case record.
Primary source: Delamere appeal 6006809, dated 25th September 2026, concerning application 25/03925/PDQ. The quotations are from paragraphs 13 and 17. Decision: Planning Inspectorate.
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