Plans for new homes and holiday lets lodged for Northumberland village

The first of the separate schemes in Longhoughton, which have all been recently submitted to Northumberland County Council, seeks permission to convert agricultural buildings at Longbank Farm into four residential properties.

The site, to the south of the village, is owned by the Northumberland Estates, with the long-standing farmer having recently given up the tenancy, meaning the buildings are no longer required for agricultural use.

The steading also features a two-storey farmhouse, two small cottages – which are tenanted separately, and a number of agricultural blocks.

The application is to convert two of the groups of traditional stone buildings to form two small, single-storey dwellings, with parking and access from the west and private gardens to the east, and two larger, two-storey properties, both with access and parking from the north.

The site has its own private access off the B1339 and there would be three parking spaces available within the curtilage of each of the properties.

A design and access statement with the application concludes: ‘The proposals represent the sustainable redevelopment of several redundant farm buildings by conversion to dwellings, creating two family homes and two smaller cottages, all with private external spaces.’

It adds: ‘The reuse of the redundant buildings as housing will benefit the main house (no longer required as a working farmhouse) and the two small cottages by removing the farm traffic from the site.’

Elsewhere, the prospective new owners of Longhoughton Hall want to convert and alter two single-storey outbuildings to the rear and side of the grade II-listed farmhouse into holiday cottages – one two-bedroom and the other three-bedroom.

The two outbuildings are detached from the main hall and are separated by the private access drive off the B1339 North End. It is proposed that each cottage would have a separate parking area for two cars.

‘It is intended that the buildings will be sympathetically altered and converted to provide an exceptionally high standard of holiday accommodation,’ a heritage statement adds.

Finally, there is a bid for another unit of tourist accommodation to the east of the village.

The single-storey, two-bedroom accessible property at Low Steads Farm would be an addition to an existing cluster of five cottages.

The layout would feature a wet room, open-plan sitting room and kitchen, utility and entrance hall, a hard-standing car park, while the design is Disability Discrimination Act compliant to level M2, including wide doorways, appropriate circulation space and level accesses.

The application explains that recent modernisation of one of the existing holiday lets has demonstrated the demand for accessible tourist accommodation for people with mobility needs.

Access and parking for two cars would be provided via the existing field gate off the unclassified road, which leads from the centre of Longhoughton down to the beach.