Omission, completely of the following wordings from paragraph 8.127: "The Council will generally apply a presumption in favour of employment generating uses. Residential conversions will only be permitted where every reasonable effort has been made to secure a suitable business use, or the residential use is a subordinate part of a business re-use, or the use is required for an agricultural or forestry worker. Residential conversions may be appropriate in certain circumstances including where they are adjacent to, or within, existing groups of buildings."

Supporting Text Paragraph 8.127 for POLICY NE15: RE-USE AND RESIDENTIAL CONVERSION OF RURAL BUILDINGS is not consistent with the NPPF 2019


Please refer to the section underlined:

Residential re-use is a concern due to; the large number of properties involved, the loss of rural business premises for which there may be a need in future and which may be uneconomic or otherwise hard to replace, the impact on the rural character of the Green Belt, and the need to facilitate new housing within or well connected to existing settlements. /The Council will generally apply a presumption in favour of employment generating uses. Residential conversions will only be permitted where every reasonable effort has been made to secure a suitable business use, or the residential use is a subordinate part of a business re-use, or the use is required for an agricultural or forestry worker. Residential conversions may be appropriate in certain circumstances including where they are adjacent to, or within, existing groups of buildings. A financial contribution will be sought by the Council towards the provision of affordable housing elsewhere within the respective Parish./
--> This is not consistent with the NPPF. The Government does not apply a priority over employment uses compared with residential uses in the NPPF. The supporting text is inconsistent with the NPPF and therefore is not sound. Since NPPF 2012, this approach has not been supported by National Policy and is completely out of date.
Please refer to the extant and emerging Policy within the Chelmsford City Council Local Plan Policy for guidance on this issue.