PLANNING NEWS

Soda Ash dwellinghouse appeal dismissed over windowless building

A Dartmoor LDC appeal was dismissed after the Inspector found domestic facilities were insufficient to make the windowless Soda Ash Building a C3 dwellinghouse under Gravesham.

by Ian Walmsley | 6th May 2026 09:00

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Windowless former utility building near a Dartmoor reservoir for the Soda Ash dwellinghouse appeal

The Soda Ash dwellinghouse appeal has been dismissed after an Inspector found that a converted former utility building still did not amount to a Class C3 dwellinghouse, despite having most of the facilities normally associated with domestic life. The section 195 appeal concerned the Soda Ash Building at Bovey Tracey in Dartmoor National Park. The owner sought a lawful development certificate for use of the building as a second home, but the Inspector concluded that its lack of windows was fundamental. The decision is particularly useful because it applies the familiar Gravesham test alongside Grendon and Moore, and makes clear that deciding whether a building is a dwellinghouse is not a simple exercise in counting how many domestic facilities are present.

Why the Soda Ash dwellinghouse appeal failed

The appeal was APP/J9497/X/24/3345832. Mr Nigel Barker appealed against Dartmoor National Park Authority’s refusal of an application for a lawful development certificate for the use of the building as a second home, described as a single dwellinghouse in Use Class C3. The building had formerly been used in connection with water treatment at Trenchford Reservoir. Externally it retained an industrial appearance.

It had no windows in its walls, a large steel door and three rooflights. Inside, however, it had been adapted considerably. By the time of the Inspector’s visit there was a double bed, television, seating, domestic furniture, bottled-gas hob, microwave, fridge, sink, shower and chemical toilet. Water was supplied by bottles and a roof tank, with mains electricity and bottled gas also available. The Inspector accepted that the cooking, eating, washing, relaxing and sleeping arrangements provided most of the facilities relevant to deciding whether the building was a dwellinghouse. That was not enough.

The National Park’s earlier officer report records the building at a less developed stage. At that site visit the sink was not connected, there was no running water and no shower or bathing facilities were seen. By the Inspector’s visit in March 2026, the decision records a functioning sink and shower. The change matters because the appellant said facilities had been added over time, although the Inspector ultimately did not need to determine exactly when each one was installed.

Gravesham is about day-to-day domestic existence

The starting point was Gravesham Borough Council v Secretary of State for the Environment and O’Brien (1984) 47 P&CR 142. Gravesham is important because there is no complete statutory definition of a dwellinghouse for planning purposes.

The case established that the distinctive characteristic is whether the building can provide the facilities required for day-to-day private domestic existence. That does not create a statutory shopping list. The assessment remains one of fact and degree. In the Soda Ash Building, the Inspector found that daylight, natural ventilation and an outlook were also part of the facilities required for ordinary private domestic existence in the particular circumstances of this building.

The lack of windows was treated as fundamental

The building had no windows or glazing in its large steel door. Natural ventilation therefore depended heavily on opening the door, supplemented by mechanical ventilation and an extractor fan. Natural light was also very limited. A sun tube brought daylight into part of the main room, but the Inspector found that the light diminished quickly away from it.

Electric lighting had to remain on during the site visit, and the bedroom and much of the larger room would still lack adequate natural light even in favourable conditions. There was also no outlook at all when the steel door was closed. The Inspector therefore concluded that some form of fenestration, whether windows or glazing in the door, was necessary in this case to provide daylight, natural ventilation and outlook.

This was not a totting-up exercise

One of the most useful parts of the decision is the Inspector’s rejection of a simple counting exercise. The presence of a bed, cooking facilities, washing facilities, a toilet, electricity and water did not automatically outweigh what was missing.

The Inspector said that a single facility could be so fundamental that its absence prevented the building from being a dwellinghouse at all. Here, the absence of windows was treated in exactly that way. That does not mean every building without conventional windows must fail. The decision repeatedly stresses that each case turns on its own facts and degree. What mattered here was the combined effect on daylight, ventilation and outlook in this particular former industrial building.

Grendon explains why occupation alone is not enough

The Inspector also relied on Grendon v First Secretary of State and Cotswold District Council [2006] EWHC 1711 (Admin). Grendon is a useful companion to Gravesham. The High Court confirmed that both the physical state of the premises and their actual, intended or attempted use can be relevant. Simply living in a structure does not necessarily turn it into a dwellinghouse.

In Grendon, the claimant lived in a small building, but the Inspector had been entitled to take account of its physical shortcomings as well as its use. The High Court rejected the argument that the question could be answered simply by asking whether the building was the claimant’s home. That is very close to the reasoning in the Soda Ash appeal. Mr Barker’s choice to use the building as accommodation mattered, but it could not overcome what the Inspector considered to be a fundamental physical deficiency.

Moore supports the fact-and-degree approach

The decision also refers to Sheila Moore v Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government and Suffolk Coastal District Council [2012] EWCA Civ 1202. Taken together, the authorities support an assessment of the building and its use in the round. There is no universal list of facilities which guarantees that a structure is, or is not, a dwellinghouse.

This is why the Inspector was able to accept that the Soda Ash Building had most of the usual domestic facilities while still concluding that it had never become a Class C3 dwellinghouse.

The second-home argument did not change the test

Mr Barker argued that the facilities expected in a second home might reasonably differ from those expected in someone’s principal residence. The Inspector considered that a fair point.

The applicant’s planning statement went further. It argued that C3 does not require a property to be someone’s permanent home, that a second home will naturally have periods when nobody is there, and that Soda Ash was being used by the same family rather than operated as commercial holiday accommodation. That distinction matters because the planning question is the character of the use, not simply whether occupation is continuous every day of the year.

There is an important wider point here. In England, Use Class C3 expressly covers use as a dwellinghouse whether or not it is someone’s sole or main residence. Full-time occupation is therefore not a legal requirement. Gravesham confirms that a second home used only at weekends or during the summer can still be a dwellinghouse, and even used a timeshare holiday cottage as an example.

Holiday use is not automatically outside C3 either. In Moore [1998] EWCA Civ 235, the Court of Appeal rejected the idea that self-contained units ceased to be dwellinghouses simply because they were commercially let for holidays and were not anyone’s permanent home. Moore [2012] EWCA Civ 1202 later made the limit clear: whether commercial holiday letting amounts to a material change of use is a question of fact and degree. Some holiday occupation can remain within the dwellinghouse use, while a sufficiently different pattern or intensity of letting can amount to a different use.

So the problem for Mr Barker was not that Soda Ash was only a second home. He first had to establish that the building itself was a dwellinghouse. The Gravesham test still had to be met and, on the facts here, it was not.

The Inspector never reached the time period

The appeal had also raised evidence about how long the building had been used residentially. Four affidavits were supplied by the appellant and members of his family. But duration only mattered if the building was capable of being a dwellinghouse in the first place.

Once the Inspector concluded that the building was not, and had not been, a C3 dwellinghouse, there was no need to decide whether residential occupation had continued for the required period. The affidavits went to use and duration, not to the missing physical facilities which decided the appeal. Our guide to a lawful development certificate appeal explains the section 195 route, while our Use Class C3 guide looks more widely at what counts as a dwellinghouse.

Why this appeal is useful

Planning Geek analysis: this is a good reminder that the planning meaning of dwellinghouse is not determined by whether somebody is genuinely living there, nor by ticking off a list of domestic appliances. The real question is whether, as a matter of fact and degree, the building has the character and facilities of a dwellinghouse. Gravesham provides the familiar test, while Grendon confirms that physical attributes and actual use must be looked at together.

The Soda Ash decision adds a particularly clear practical example: the Inspector was prepared to treat daylight, natural ventilation and outlook as fundamental in the circumstances, despite the presence of most other domestic facilities.

Sources and documents

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