Class Q prior approval for one 3-bed and six 4-bed homes in a steel-framed farm building. Together they make 1,000 square metres, the most floor area the right allows, all inside the existing frame.
The long side of the building. Visualisation of the approved scheme; the landscaping is reserved by condition, so the planting shown is an impression rather than an approved layout.
The cattle building as we found it, and the entrance front as approved.
Corrugated sheeting over a steel frame, set back behind conifers at the end of a concrete yard.
Photograph of the building as found.
The frame the structural inspection assessed, and the one all seven homes are planned within.
Photograph of the interior as found.
At the centre the roof sheeting comes away and the frame stands over an open courtyard. Light wells and rooflights reach deeper rooms.
Visualisation of the approved scheme. Landscaping is reserved by condition.
A big shed is not a big consent.
What Class Q gives a large farm building comes down to three things: whether it is sound, whether homes work inside the frame without a rebuild, and whether the plan can be lit and reached.
Discuss your building
Answer those three properly and the right can deliver the most it allows. Here that meant seven homes and the full 1,000 square metres.
The estate had a large steel-framed cattle building. Its owners wanted to know what the building could become under Class Q, the permitted development right that lets an agricultural building be converted to homes without a full planning application. The question had two halves: how many homes the rules would allow, and whether those homes would be good places to live once they were inside a cattle shed.
Class Q is generous in some ways and strict in others. A scheme can have up to ten homes, but no more than 1,000 square metres of floor space in all and no home larger than 150. The building has to be capable of conversion as it stands, and the works allowed are the ones reasonably necessary to make it a home. The council checks a fixed list of matters, including highways, design and external appearance, and natural light to every habitable room, and each one has to be met.
We started with the building, not the layout. An independent structural inspection recorded steel portal frames at roughly 4.6 metre centres, a concrete slab throughout, and a structure in satisfactory condition. That report is what the conversion rests on, and the design keeps the whole frame.
The homes go around the edge, so every bay of the structure is used and the existing openings become front doors. In the middle of the plan the roof sheeting comes away and the steel frame stands over an open courtyard, while light wells and rooflights reach the deeper rooms. Under the current rules the 1,000 square metre cap runs out before the ten-home cap does. One 3-bed home at 100 and six 4-bed homes at 150 come to exactly 1,000, and seven larger homes suited the building and its rural setting better than ten small ones in the same area.
The outside stays plain: a standing-seam metal roof, a pale multi-tone brick, warm white render framing the openings and slim aluminium windows, so the building still reads as one long agricultural shed in the landscape. A transport statement set out the route from the existing farm entrance, widened at the junction, with passing places along the drive, turning space on site for a refuse lorry, and coded gates so residents do not drive through the working farm.
The council granted prior approval in 2026, 49 days after it received the application and inside the 56 days it is allowed, subject to twelve conditions. A Class Q approval carries its own clock: the conversion has to be completed within three years of the approval date, so the technical design has to keep within the same limits the approval was granted on.
Feasibility, design and the prior approval application, RIBA Stages 0 to 3.
The conversion rests on that report.
Still one long agricultural shed in the landscape.
Approved in 49 days, inside the 56 allowed.
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