Planning Inspector upholds established approach to planning units

01 Jan 2018

Housing, Planning and Environment, Property

munitions site in Sevenoaks.
An application had been made for a certificate of lawful use for B8 use in relation to the whole of a former munitions site. The Council had granted a certificate restricted only to some bunkers on the land. The Inspector confirmed that the appropriate approach was to look at the planning unit. The planning unit included the area around the bunkers, and storage was the principle use of the planning unit. Storage could not have taken place without the area around the bunkers. Although nothing was actually stored in the land around the bunkers it had a functional relationship with the storage use. In taking this approach he reaffirmed the taken in the cases of Burdle and G Percy Trentham to planning units, and confirmed that the certificate should related to the whole of the site area.

The Inspector also confirmed that the storage of munitions can fall within Class B8 of the Use Classes Order and was not a sui generis use.

As there was a historic certificate of lawful development permitting B8 use on the site its lawfulness was conclusively presumed