Under English planning law, a "Bed and Breakfast" and a "Guest House" are two totally different classifications - you can run a B&B from the place at which you live with no special permissions even if it's in a residential area, but a Guest House or Hotel is described as a business and the property needs to be classified as such.

You may have read about our "Well House Manor" project - to provide accommodation for delegates on our course in Melksham ourselves in the future, and you may have noticed that I've been slightly quiet (especially for me) on the subject. That's because we've been going through planning hoops and the final go-ahead has been dependent on us getting change of use to "C1" approved. Although we'll be making very little change in practise to the traffic levels / curtilage at "The Old Manor", there were elements of doubt in whether the planning would be accepted. It started with the "history" of planning applications on the site, where the previous owner had been looking to sell to a property developer and have one house knocked down and replaced by 22; as you can imagine, the neighbours had been up in arms and view any new application with a pinch of salt and look at it with a fine toothcomb. Add in the access issue, where the current turning onto the B road outside is blind and can be fixed well (but not perfect to 2.4 x 90m specification for new build), and 8 neighbours with various bones to pick on subjects like trees, and wanting to buy some of the garden themselves, and you'll see that the whole thing wasn't quite a rubber stamping exercise.

Anyway - it's all "GO!" now. Full approval for C1 use, which is described as a "Hotel or Guest House"; a couple of caveats but none that will hold back what we'll be doing. Lisa has been doing a fantastic job already and there's plans, drawings, budgets, finances, professionals all coming together for our takeover at the end of May. We'll then be doing something of a "refurb" - after all, the building was scheduled for demolition if the 22 houses had gone ahead so the decor has become a little timed and some worn components haven't been replaced. And we'll be opening in the Autumn. Very exciting!

Link - Interim information
Link - Ground and usage plans
Link - Places to stay until we open
Link - The embryonic "official" Well House Manor site
(written 2006-04-03 04:58:33)

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