Woodland Skills Centre Staff Dwelling Application Faces Rejection

A woodland skills centre specialising in health and wellbeing courses wants to erect a staff dwelling, but the council’s planning officers are advising the application is thrown out.
Rod Waterfield has applied to Denbighshire County Council’s planning department, seeking permission to erect a rural enterprise dwelling at The Warren in Bodfari, Denbigh, for the Woodland Skills Centre.
The plans for the social enterprise include a septic tank and associated works at the 50 acres of woodland in the Clwydian Range, which is considered an Area of Natural Beauty.
The centre runs various woodland craft programmes for adults with learning disabilities, special education in schools, pupil inclusion, and charities working with adults with alcohol and substance misuse problems.
Other projects involve the Youth Service, private residential care homes, Blind Veterans UK, MIND, Flying Start, Babi Actif, and agencies working with the long-term unemployed.
The land incorporates a heritage orchard with over 60 trees, 14 allotments, a medicinal herb garden, a small farm including three polytunnels, and a market garden, worked by the people attending various social prescribing programmes.
Horticulture Wales and the National Botanic Garden of Wales also run courses at the centre, which includes a caravan site.
The centre says the dwelling is needed so crops and livestock can be cared for on the site throughout the year.
“As has been explained, the social prescribing programmes do not operate 24 hours a day for seven days a week,” a statement reads in the planning report.
“The need to maintain, care for, and feed crops and livestock does not stop once the programmes have finished for the day Monday to Friday. If these needs are not met, the viability of the enterprise would be compromised.”
The application is supported by Bodfari Community Council.
But Denbighshire’s planning officers are advising councillors to be mindful to refuse permission.
A planning report concludes: “It is not considered that the labour requirements of Warren Woods Ltd amount to an essential need for a full-time rural worker to reside on site.
“The labour requirement for opening and closing tasks at the site have been met for a number of years by the applicant who lives six miles from the application site. The essential need for a labour requirement relating to animal welfare and crop protection are minimal, and the number of livestock on site and area of crops grown under polytunnels remain unknown.”
The plans will be discussed at a planning committee meeting at Denbighshire’s Ruthin County Hall HQ on Wednesday.

By Richard Evans – Local Democracy Reporter