Lawful Development Certificate for existing use as Residential curtilage

sophreeves

Hi,
We're looking at putting an offer in on a new house we've found.  On doing my research about the house, I found that in 2018 the owner applied for a lawful development certificate for existing use as residential curtilage, and this was refused.  Please can someone explain to me what this means? 
On the land registry site the house shows as three separate titles (a mixture of freehold and leasehold).  From looking at the documents enclosed with the lawful development certificate application it appears that initially the house was just the house with the land immediately behind - over the years the house has acquired the land to the side also (referred to as 'vacant - industrial').
I realise our solicitors would likely work through any complications if we proceed, but we'd like to have a better understand of what it is before putting an offer in. 
Any advice appreciated!  

sophreeves

Just an extra note - we would want to be building some sort of summerhouse / outbuilding on the land next to the house, so trying to understand whether this could be done under permitted development rights or whether we'd need full planning permission (which has been rejected historically for this piece of land)

davidmcn

Presumably they added (or were proposing to add) some adjoining land which wasn't previously residential. I would guess it's the "industrial" bit. Sounds problematic if the council said no.

eddddy

It sounds like you have the planning docs - presumably from the council's planning applications website (or if you haven't, you can get them from there).

What reasons were given for refusal of a Lawful Development Certificate? 

Often, it would be because the applicant has been unable to prove 'on the balance of probabilities' that the land has been used as a garden for a period of either 4 or 10 years (I think it might be 10 years in this case).

To be clear - the council could just be saying that the land hasn't been used as a garden for 10 years, they're not saying that they wouldn't give planning consent if an application was made. In fact, if they were unhappy with it's use as a garden, I suspect they would have made an enforcement order telling the owner to stop using it as a garden.

(i.e. It might just be a misguided property owner who applied for a 'lawful development certificate', when they would have been better off applying for planning consent for change of use - but you'd need to check this out.)

sophreeves

Thanks for your replies!  That's really helpful.
The current owner bought the property in 2017 to renovate it (she's an architect). In 2017 she applied for 'householder planning permission' to build a garage on the land next to it, but withdrew this after having a comment that she would need to apply for 'full planning permission' as the land is not part of the residential curtilage of the house. 
The land had previously always just been waste land and she has now flattened it and put loose stones on (to make it look more attractive) for selling.  We would be wanting to use it as a garden  (and eventually build some sort of outbuilding on) - do you know if we'd have to apply for planning or change of use, or neither, just to use it as a garden? 
Sorry if these are silly questions, I'm very confused by everything I've read!!
Thanks