Do you own an agricultural barn? Traditional stone barn, steel portal frame or concrete? Did you know it may be possible to convert it to up to three dwelling units without full planning? Turning redundant or under utilised agricultural buildings into residential properties can be highly lucrative. Clearly some of these buildings need to be imaginatively revived to use them as dwellings and technical detailing is key to create sustainable and beautiful homes.
Western Building Consultants have extensive experience from concept to completion with dealing with such structures starting from initial survey and appraisals of the structural stability through to designing the barns to meet Class Q guidelines, building regulations and administering the project. Often the large spaces and oversized nature of these industrial buildings can create wonderful and unusual dwellings, the scale of which just wouldn’t normally be allowed in a rural residential context.
These planning regulations, known as ‘Class Q permitted development’ are part of the government’s drive to ease the pressure on rural housing supply.
For Class Q regulations to apply a building needs to have been used for agriculture on or before 20th March 2013.
(Class Q will not It doesn’t apply to listed buildings, those in an Area of outstanding national beauty, conservation area which are in AONB, National Parks or conservation areas, or those which are listed.
It is common for applications to be interpreted differently across councils so local knowledge can be key in getting the right decision. Contact us today to to find out more.
Architectural design by RIBA Architects & CIAT Technologists for Class Q barn conversions in the South West & Wales.
feel free to get in contact to discuss your project and get a free consultation.
We’re really happy with the quality and efficiency of service. Maria has made the process of getting the plans for our mid terrace extension feel easy and we’re delighted with the design. Her suggestions will make the living space the best it can be.
Fabulous service from Elizabeth Anderson of Western Building Consultants. Stepped in when we were having difficulties with another service provider, grasped the project needs quickly and produced a quality proposal in a collaborative, proactive and timely fashion. A really enjoyable process made all the better by Elizabeth’s friendly manner and expertise.
“WBC have been professional throughout. Alan Meade in Bath provided a thorough and comprehensive report, identified my repair priorities, explained the technical issues and followed up with very clear and enormously helpful advice as to what I should do next. Would and already have recommended them to others.”
Western were really professional, quick and went above and beyond to give us the designs we wanted as well as keeping us on track with our building plans. Thanks to James and all the team for the excellent work and affordable price.
Top notch service here from Paul Keegan who was super patient with us and when we finally got access for a building condition survey on our new premises, he went above and beyond the call of duty to get our report back to us over a weekend. Thanks WBC you came up trumps for us.
We want to say big thank you to western building consultants. We couldn’t be happier with everything they’ve done for us.
We are a small local building company that were looking for a similar sized company to work with us on many various projects from loft conversions and extensions to structural works of all sizes.
It’s been a relationship that’s worked great from day one. It’s been over a year now of working with western on at least a weekly basis. Whether its the office staff, architects or structural engineers they’ve been second to none. Always helpful and accommodating even throughout this pandemic which must of been a struggle.
I love that we can offer westerns services along side our own and the feed back we get from all of our customers when they’ve had contact with western is great.
In the 20 years I’ve been a builder this company is the best I’ve used and we will continue to use them for the next 20 years.
Ashley
Tweedy Brothers Total Building Services
Exceptional service provided by Maria Simone; she incorporated as many of our requests as possible when designing a beautiful extension for us despite many limits and delays from the planning office. Her professional, thorough and friendly approach made us feel confident that we were in safe hands and we look forward to working with her and the rest of the team.
Have received a great service from Jo at Western Building Consultants so far. She is always very responsive, works extra hard for our tight timeline and kept me updated through out the process and was really quick to understand our project objective.
This is the third time I have worked with Western Building Consultants and as usual they have been a pleasure to work with. I dealt directly with Sam and Jo who did the Structural Calculations and the Drawings respectively for my residential to HMO conversion project. They were accommodating, engaging and professional.
I look forward to the next project!
I had a very positive experience with Western Building Consultants right from the start with requesting a quote from Ebony through to the delivery from Jo. Jo delivered exactly what i needed to a very good standard so much so that i’ve already booked in for another job. I wouldn’t hesitate to recommend WBC to others.
Our journey with Western Building consultancy so far has been fantastic! Jo’s patience and ability to understand my scribbles and ridiculous ideas made designing our venture fun instead of daunting. Communication is always prompt, professional and most importantly sincere. I’m really looking forward to how the rest of our project progresses!
I have enjoyed working with Western Building Consultants on a complicated project for about 4 years now. During that time they have without fail given me a high level of customer service, being welcoming, responsive and competent.
As a customer I particularly appreciate that WBC are value for money. They also stick to their quotes and don’t add a lot of extras. Help and advice is always forthcoming generally at no extra charge.
Thank you so much for all your advice today. That was so very helpful, not only with the structure of the property but especially with your comments about the whole set up. I can see that we were within a gnat’s whisker of entering a complete can of worms… Thank you so much for saving us from making a stupid mistake.
Thanks to you both your help in this matter – you were both extremely efficient and accommodating (more than I can say about other companies I contacted).
Your professionalism has been invaluable, thank you.
Thank you for your extremely comprehensive report. It will be of immense help when deciding on the works we would like to carry out on the property. We have decided to take your advice and move into the property and live in it for a while to assess our requirements.
Thank you for your prompt service, could not have asked or expected more. I note your comments and in an ideal world everything would have been 1.
Will not hesitate to recommend you, and will make a point of letting the estate agent know this too.
I just wanted to say thank you very much for your thorough and clear report. It is written in an informative and jargon free way which has made a pretty hefty document ultimately digestible and easy to understand.
Hello Kerry, Many thanks for the report and invoice receipt.
Please pass on my thanks to Paul for the survey. In my working life, I read many stock survey reports – I work with social housing providers to set up their asset management strategies – and this was one of the clearest and most comprehensive I’ve seen.
Dear Paul, Thank you so much for your fast response and the detail in your report is very very good and greatly appreciated. Thank you for your efforts.
Many thanks for your swift and thorough return of this report, we so appreciate you getting this back to us on such a tight turn around this week, and on the first read it seems extremely clear and comprehensive.
Hi Kerry / Paul, Thanks for sending the survey across.
I’d also like to thank you for your excellent service and professionalism. I considered many surveyors before choosing to proceed with you and it’s clear that I made the right choice. I won’t hesitate to recommend you to family, friends and colleagues in the future.
“We have commissioned three building surveys from WBC until we found the house that was right for us and all thanks to you”
I never expected so much detail, the report was really great and there were things I never even considered, even being in the construction trade
The report was brilliant and went into so much detail, having had reports from other surveyors in the past this report was far superior
“Highly recommended. Good customer service over the phone and by email. Very quick: from the initial phone call booking a site visit to me receiving the calculations took only 8 days.”
“We used James Dean …Western Building Consultants as an architect. Very good”
“Good surveyors & structural engineers that we used were www.westernbuildingconsultants.com
We were really happy with them, they came highly recommended by several people”
“Excellent service and help from the initial design/planning stage through to the end of all works”
“I can recommend Western Building Consultants. They are great on structural calculations, advice and technical drawings to whatever extent you want. We used them for advice and calcs for taking out our main load bearing wall downstairs. They were recommended several times over when we started looking.”
“Superb, professional, efficient, friendly, positive”
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