House can be built in Green Belt, planners decide

PLANNING chiefs at Warrington have given the go-ahead for a house to be built on a Green Belt site where a previous farm building had started to collapse when restoration work started on it.
Officers had recommended the scheme be refused because it could not be regarded as a replacement for an existing building because there was, in effect, no existing building.
The plan is at Hope Farm, in Warrington Road, Risley.
Members of the borough council’s development management committee were told the plan involved the site of a former farm building which had planning consent for conversion to a dwelling.
But when work had started, the building started to collapse and had to be demolished. The applicant had then started to build the new property on the site of the old one.
Members of Croft Parish Council had visited the site and considered that as the original building had consent for conversion to a dwelling, the applicant was simply replacing the original building. They did not object to the scheme.
But planning officers said a new dwelling in the Green Belt could only be built if it replaced an existing building. As it had been demolished, there was no existing building to replace. They recommended refusal.
But the committee decided the scheme could go ahead.