Case Study
Realising Site Potential – Sussex

Analysis of Planning History, and Certificates of Lawful Proposed Development to increase site capacity

Our clients wanted to maximise the potential of their site for housing.

The Site

The site is in an area of countryside in Surrey. The site originally comprised a house, a mobile home, some stables which had been lived in for over 4 years, and an area of commercial storage. Our brief was to regularise the current situation and explore options to bring forward the site for further residential development.

The Strategy

The first part of the process was to confirm the current lawful uses for the site by applying for certificates of Lawfulness for Existing Uses. These were for

• ‘The use of land for the siting of a mobile home for residential purposes’,
• ‘Use of Stables as a dwelling house’.
• ‘Outbuilding has been used for commercial storage purposes’.

All of these uses had become lawful through the passage of time under either the 4-year or 10-year rule. This established that there were 2 further dwellings on the site and the remainder of the site was previously developed land.

The established uses were then traded in for 2 large executive homes.