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Michael,

the Permitted Development rights may only apply to an agricultural holding (based on what little I have managed to glean so far) so there may not be an investment until the pre-approval process has been carried out by the landowner of the complete holding.

The details are still not public it seems (the BBC News website sounded most frustrated by this fact when they broke this story on Friday!) With the pre-approval process you should get a decision within a tightly prescribed timeframe.

I think we will see that these new Permitted Development rights rules may be very carefully crafted to ensure only agricultural holdings are granted these right to prevent them being used on buildings that merely happen to be in the countryside. On a plus side bear in mind they cover more than barns.

It does seem we will not see the rebuild option that was in the consultation paper and the 150 square metre per unit to a maximum of 3 units (as opposed to the aggregated figure quoted above) may also limit some speculative developments.