Two doctors have lost a planning tussle with the national park authority over a holiday let, an inspector’s report has revealed.
Paul Freel, an independent planning inspector appointed by the Secretary of State, rejected the appeal by Dr Michael Harrison and Dr Amanda Booth.
They contested an enforcement notice served by planners at the Lake District National Park Authority in November last year. It concerned the use as a holiday let of a two-storey, one-bedroom annexe in the grounds of the Grade II listed Eagle Farm, Glenridding, which the couple own.
The separate detached farmhouse is already an official award-winning three-bed holiday let, sleeping six.
But the annexe, a former piggery which sleeps two, has also been let out year-round to tourists since 2019, which saw LDNPA planners take action last winter.
They served a legal notice ordering them to stop the use of the annexe as a short-term holiday let because they had no planning permission. But the owners contested it and said that when permission to create the annexe was first granted by the LDNPA in 2014, no conditions were laid down which would prevent such a use, and that they considered it part of the same unit as the main farmhouse.
However, in a report published this month, Mr Freel disagreed and ruled in favour of the national park. It means the appeal has failed, the enforcement notice is upheld and the use of the annexe as a holiday let must stop.
Mr Freel said it was an example of how LDNPA policies sometimes conflicted with each other — the need for local housing in the Lakes versus support for tourism.
He wrote: “The use of the annexe for short-term holiday letting accommodation has resulted in the creation of a separate planning unit, the use of which requires planning permission in its own right.”
He also believed the need to provide local housing outweighed the need for tourism accommodation. The LDNPA has indicated it would support the annexe being used as a property for local need with a local occupancy condition attached.
The inspector has suggested that if a garage was integrated into living accommodation it could be converted into a permanent residential dwelling to help with local housing shortage.
National park statistics, submitted to the Government as part of a consultation on awarding new powers to control the spiralling loss of properties to holiday lets, show that in the parish of Patterdale, there are 89 holiday lets, 76 second homes and five empty houses.
Matterdale has 62 second homes and 84 holiday lets. However, planners face a major backlog in tackling reported enforcement cases.
