Permission granted in Barmouth for change of use from 4 flats into a large holiday letting property

We have been assisting a client over a number of months to secure consent for change of use of a building containing 4 small and run down flats into use as a single large holiday letting unit. As Barmouth is in an area with a high number of holiday homes Gwynedd Council would not ordinarily grant consent for this use, and there was the potent nail for other options being cut off by the forthcoming Article 4 Direction that would remove the option to change the flats into holiday letting units without consent.

We advised a carefully tailored approach, first securing a Certificate of Lawfulness of Proposed Use to confirm that it would indeed be permitted development (for the time being) to change the existing flats into holiday flats. This also ensured that our client had a way forward if consent for their preferred option was not granted.

We then used this fallback to argue that the building could and would be changed into that use if consent was granted to instead use it as a single holiday letting property. We also argued that the proposed approach would result in a better quality of property, greater benefits for the local economy, with the same or lower impacts upon neighbours and the area.

As a result, Gwynedd Council granted permission for our client’s scheme, and they can now press on with their project secure in the knowledge that it will not be caught by the incoming Article 4 Direction.