A FARMER has been given permission to put up a new steel framed barn after months of wrangling with council planners. 

Mark Fisher was told in April he couldn’t put up the barn, after notifying a council of his plans, and revised proposals that reduced the size of the barn were also rejected under the scheme that allows for agricultural buildings to be put up without making a full planning application. 

As a result the farmer was told he would have to make a planning application to Torfaen Borough Council which has now approved the plan for a barn with hit and miss timber walls and which has been further reduced in size to 21 metres by 10 metres. Its sloping monoptich roof will be 6.5m at its highest point. 

The planning department said since it refused Mr Fisher prior approval for the barn at his Ty Llwyd Farm, in Llanfrechfa, he has provided further details of the agricultural use of the barn, intended to store hay and other crops and machinery, and of the wider area as well as evidence of a site notice to publicise his plans. 

The council also said it was concerned about the impact on an oak tree which is thought to be 250 years old. 

But it said a survey shows the barn would only encroach on the tree’s root protection area by 1.5 per cent which it described as a “negligible adverse impact” which can be managed by following a tree protection plan, which will be required as a planning condition. 

Mr Fisher had said the barn would have made would have made an existing track that crosses the root protection area redundant, protecting the tree.

The farm is within the council designated South Eastern Lowlands Special Landscape Area and a site of importance for nature conservation is nearby.