Planning permission granted on appeal for games room and gym

A planning inspector has upheld an appeal by a Lower Swainswick resident to keep a detached outbuilding after Bath & North East Somerset Council refused to grant retrospective permission for it.

The single-storey outbuilding is on land used as a garden at 2 Bathway Meadows, London Road West.

Measuring 11 metres by four metres and with a flat roof, it is used as a games room and gym.

No.2 is outside the Green Belt, but the appeal site is within the Green Belt. In turning down the planning application last October, council planners called it “inappropriate” development within the Green Belt.

The appeal was lodged with the Planning Inspectorate in February, the inspector visited in June, and her decision has now been published.

She said the building replaces an earlier one, although she did not have “conclusive evidence”, such as a scale drawings, against which to determine the scale, mass and height of the previous one.

However, the new building’s simple design, modest size and scale and its siting close to existing development means it does not cause substantial harm to the openness of the Green Belt, even when viewed from the public right of way to the south of the site, the inspector concluded.