Green belt extension need not abut main building court rules

A new building in the green belt can be an ‘extension' to a house even if it does not immediately abut it, the High Court has ruled.

Warwick District Council had appealed against a planning inspector’s decision to allow an appeal by residents Jules Storer and Ann Lowe, who wished to demolish an outbuilding and replace it with a garden room/home office.

Warwick refused permission on the basis that the proposed structure did not fall within any of the exceptions to the principle that construction of new buildings in the Green Belt is inappropriate.

Mr Storer and Ms Lowe successfully appealed by arguing that the new building would fall within the exception isn 149(c] of the National Planning Policy Framework for "the extension or alteration of a building provided that it does not result in disproportionate additions over and above the size of the original building”.

The council said interpretation of that provision was a matter of law and that on its proper interpretation an extension of an existing building must be physically attached to the latter.

It said that since the new building would not adjoin the house “the inspector erred in law in concluding that the exception applied.

Giving judgment, Mr Justice Eyre said: “It is right to note that if the language of [149(c)] were to be considered in isolation from its context then [Warwick’s] interpretation of the words used would be the more natural reading of those words.

“It is not, however, the only legitimate reading of the words and the [inspector’s] interpretation that an extension of a building can include a physically detached structure is also a tenable reading of the words used.”

Eyre J said the inspector’s interpretation was “the reading which accords considerably more readily with the content and purpose of the relevant part of the NPPF”.

Warwick’s claim that an extension had to abut a house “has the potential to lead to artificial distinctions which would do nothing to further the purposes of the Green Belt whereas that advanced by the [inspector] would remove the risk of that artificiality without jeopardising those purposes”, the judge said.

He concluded: “Accordingly, I am satisfied that [149(c)] is not to be interpreted as being confined to physically attached structures but that an extension for the purposes of that provision can include structures which are physically detached from the building of which they are an extension.”