How To Plan Farm Development Without Wasting Money

The fastest way to waste money on farm planning permission is to chase a single idea without a strategy. We’re joined by Morwenna, our farm planning consultant and CAD designer at Foxes Rural, to unpack what “thinking strategically” actually looks like when you’re trying to develop a farm, protect the core agricultural business, and build new income streams under real-world rural planning policy.

We talk through what happens when a client calls with big plans but no clear route, especially around succession or taking over a holding. Morwenna explains why a stage one appraisal matters, how we look at the whole site and its constraints, and why the order you do projects in can make or break your long-term goals. We also get honest about the most common question we hear: can you build a house on a piece of land? Despite national “build, build, build” headlines, local countryside policy often says otherwise unless there’s a genuine agricultural need.

From there we move into practical farm diversification ideas that are showing up again and again, from commercial storage to paddle courts inside redundant barns. We compare full planning applications with permitted development rights, including Class R, and why PD routes can sometimes avoid costly layers like ecology surveys. If you want a clearer farm planning strategy, fewer surprises, and a better chance of success, this conversation will help you plan the next move properly.

If you find this useful, please subscribe, share the episode with a farmer who’s weighing up a project, and leave us a review so more people can find the Farmers Planning Podcast.

www.foxesrural.co.uk

Transcript

Welcome And Meet Morwenna

Speaker 0:01

I'm Gone. I help farmers get planning permission on their farms. And welcome back to the Farmers Planning Podcast. Today we have Morwenna, our farm planning consultant and our CAD designer at Foxes Rural. And we're just going to talk about generally what you need to know on farms in terms of strategy. So, Morwenna, welcome to the podcast.

Speaker 1 0:21

Thank you.

Speaker 0:22

Have you been on it before?

Speaker 1 0:23

No, I haven't. It's my first time.

Speaker 0:26

So not only is it your first time, it's a new venue for you as well.

Speaker 1 0:29

Exactly. It's fancy.

Speaker 0:31

Oh yeah, it's nice. I quite like the microphones.

Speaker 1 0:34

Yeah, no pressure.

Speaker 0:35

We normally have this tiny little microphone, so like

Why Farm Planning Needs Strategy

Speaker 0:38

you'll spoil with this. Um yeah, so I just wanted to talk about what farmers need to know in terms of farm strategy. So we've sat on a few calls recently with clients, haven't we? And one of the things we find is that they don't have much idea in terms of strategy. There's a lot of shooting from the hip, and you know, there's a real mix of views out there. And I get why people are doing it. They're trying to come up with ideas, you know, we've got high fuel prices, high fertilizer prices, all margins are getting squeezed. So trying to diversify and do new things. And I think what we do differently is that we'll always look at stuff strategically. We've got a team of quite strategically minded people. So we're all we're always looking at the strategy first, aren't we? And really, farmers, before they do any planning on their farm, need to look at their overall farm strategy. Because what farmers won't realise sometimes is that there will be a crossover, won't there? So you might do some planning for something here, which then affects your long-term problems over here that you want to develop next. So you've got to look at everything first and make sure that you come up with a planning strategy that's right. So what would happen in a in a strategic case, I suppose, when you're looking at a farm, what would happen? You'd you'd take a call from a client, or how how

Stage One Appraisals And True Costs

Speaker 2:03

would you approach it?

Speaker 1 2:04

Yeah, so we might get um a call or an email from a client who they may have just taken over the farm, um, it may be sort of a succession situation, and they've got some buildings, they've got plans, they've got ideas, but they don't really know how to get there.

Speaker 2:19

Yeah.

Speaker 1 2:20

And I think the main sort of strategy um is taking that wide picture um view of it. If you're not looking at everything as a whole, you may jeopardize things down the line. Yeah. Um, so when those clients come to us with those ideas, for us, it's very good to look into obviously the site and the constraints and things like that, but also to make sure that we're giving them a correct order to do things to make sure that they're not jeopardizing anything down the line.

Speaker 2:48

And I think what we would try and do is we try and cut out where we think their chances aren't realistic on something. So there's a lot of agents out there that will say, Oh yeah, we can go for a house, and they'll just do stuff reactively. So put an application in without any strategy behind it, and they're told it's a certain price, and then this survey costs more, this survey costs more, and before they know it, the client's been probably five times what they've actually needed to. Whereas if they'd have just done a strategic appraisal at the start, then they'd know that upfront of as to what the actual total cost would be. I think our favourite route is

Can You Build A House Here

Speaker 3:25

well, the inquiry we get the most of would be can I build a house on this piece of land?

Speaker 1 3:32

Absolutely, absolutely.

Speaker 3:34

And what would you say the perception is nationally in terms of building a piece of land? Sorry, building a house on the piece of land. It's everyone thinks it's possible, and nine times out of ten it's not.

Speaker 1 3:47

Absolutely. I think at the moment, obviously, you know, you read the headlines and the government at the moment, it's all sort of build new houses, build, build, build, but that's not feeding down to a local level, and especially in the countryside. You know, at the moment, the planning policy isn't there to support it unless there is sort of an agricultural need. Something like, you know, you've got breeding cattle, um, or breeding livestock, and you need to be there to make sure that you know they're they're looked after. Unless you've got an extreme situation like that, at the moment the planning policy generally um isn't there to support it at local level, unfortunately.

Speaker 4:25

Yeah. And you head up a lot of our stage one appraisals. So you're basically looking at the strategy of the farms when when the client inquires. And I would say, what are the opportunities that you're finding out of a lot of those what we call stage one reports? Are you finding it's commercial? Is it agricultural? What what's the root of that?

Speaker 1 4:44

So I think with most of our stage ones, actually taking a step back and thinking how can we keep the farm going as an

Diversification Ideas That Stack Up

Speaker 1 4:52

agricultural enterprise whilst also diversifying?

Speaker 4:55

Yeah.

Speaker 1 4:55

Um, the cost of, like you said earlier, fuel, fertilizer, everything's gone up. So the farming enterprise alone is struggling. So actually looking at those older buildings that have been up that are currently, you know, in an okay state, yeah. But being able to change the use of those into something like a commercial storage, put up a new barn under your permitted development rights first, and then do that change of use on the older barn, you're not jeopardising one or the other, but you're diversifying your income streams, and I think that's imperative at the moment.

Speaker 5:26

Yeah. And what would you say is the most common farm diversification thing at the moment?

Speaker 1 5:32

There's sort of two streams. One is going to be obviously your storage and distribution, but your paddle courts.

Speaker 5:38

Paddle courts.

Speaker 1 5:39

Paddle courts.

Speaker 5:40

How many paddle courts do you think there are going to be nationally soon?

Speaker 1 5:43

There's going to be quite a few in v in farmers' barns. Um, but the idea of a sports venue, you know, whether that be paddle, whether that be something else, actually in one of your redundant barns, isn't, you know, it's not a bad idea at all.

Speaker 5:56

I think it's fantastic. I mean, I think the paddle market's still rising.

Speaker 1 5:59

Absolutely.

Speaker 6:00

Um I think we see a mixture of the types of planning. So that's when we're sort of saying, well, you know, paddle's one that's quite common, but you've actually got quite an extreme of planning cases with it. You've got one that might just be a straightforward paddle install internally, might be a change of use, might already have a permission that were just varying. Yeah. So that's going to be much more straightforward than say the new build paddle court in an open field or a a building that needs significant renovation or something like that. And they've all got different angles. Absolutely. And actually, in the office this morning, we were talking about the strategy on one way. We were saying actually there's two or three strategies or angles that the client could take with this, which is going to be the most effective and which is going to be the most successful.

Speaker 1 6:42

Absolutely. And, you know, that's where the strategy from the outset is imperative, because actually you could spend a lot of money converting one of your barns or leaving it agricultural and going for planning on a on a new build,

Permitted Development Before Full Planning

Speaker 1 6:55

when actually the strategy from the outset should have been to convert that older building. Because, you know, we've spoken before about Class R being sort of a streamlined approach um to planning. And actually, if you've you've got those opportunities to use your Class R rights, then that's you know going to be a far more successful application than a new build in the open countryside that the planners may not like too much.

Speaker 7:18

Yeah. I think what you're getting at is trying to use permitted development rights first. Absolutely. So over full planning, because full planning comes with a lot of additional costs and surveys. And the the permitted development rights on farms are quite far reaching, aren't they?

Speaker 1 7:31

They are indeed. And with your full planning applications, you know, you're subject to ecology and you know, ecology can be lovely people. Um, but if there's bats or if there's newts, then you know, we're we're into trouble.

Speaker 7:44

Whereas a checkbook account.

Speaker 1 7:45

Yeah, exactly. So, you know, by using your permitted development rights, you can remove some of those layers of complexity. And if you can, then that is definitely the route you need to go down to make sure that your farm, you know, balances its books.

Speaker 7:58

So the farmers that are listening, what's one tip that comes out of a stage

The One Tip And Closing

Speaker 8:02

one? What do you find that's most common that you're finding?

Speaker 1 8:05

Most common is we need to look at the wider picture. Yeah. Whether that is, you know, we need to make sure that the farming stays viable. We don't want to be changing a barn and then trying to get a new one later down, you know, a year later because you've not got the space, because actually the planners may think, well, hang on a minute, yeah, you didn't need it a year ago. So making sure that you you're balancing the farming agriculture enterprise with your new diversification strategies.

Speaker 8:30

Yeah, no, thanks so much for coming in today and giving us your insight on it. And yeah, farmers keep building those pedal courts because you know the trend is there.