Planning at last....

Whoop Whoop we finally have planning permission (again). It's taken a bit of verbal prodding to encourage the planning department to finish the job, but we actually now have a green for go. We have quite a few conditions to meet before we can actually start work, including a mining survey and yet another bat survey. The mining investigation is required by the coal authority as the area is riddled with mines, including some unrecorded ones at shallow depth. Damn those miners. The batty bat survey has us banging our heads against a wall as we had a survey last year by a bat expert who said that over the course of his three surveys at the barns since 2005, he has not found any evidence of roosting bats and the barns have become so increasingly decrepit that even bats wouldn't want to live in them anyway because they are so draughty. Bah and double Bah. However, despite all the conditions, we have actually been allowed to make all the changes we requested which is a very welcome positive note.