A sustainable home is somewhere you can live, work and flourish isn't it?

My owners got consent to convert me from a redundant cob Devon barn to a luxury residence in 1998.  There was no question in the Planners' minds that it was an ideal use for an important historic barn in danger of decay (I hate that word makes me shudder to think what might have been).

Things changed a few years later and someone introduced the word 'Sustainability' into Planning Policy (yes I can remember a bunch of academics and strutting peacock types wandering around me arguing about what this new fashionable word actually meant.  More to the point - what it actually meant for the future of redundant historic barns.

Well, it was the kiss of death actually.  A raft of new legislation was drafted, by people who had no real experience of Sustainability in practice, it was all theoretical, never been tested but they had to be right didn't they?  Car journeys was the measure required to calculate Sustainability - not a mention of the fact that I was built almost entirely out of materials sourced on site and my owners did their best to re-use, recycle and source natural local materials where possible.  Not a mention of the good use of an otherwise useless barn and certainly not a thought went into what type of people might actually accommodate a spacious home converted from a barn and how much travelling they would actually do.

Luckily most of the barns in this area had been rescued by that point and were providing comfortable, spacious and healthy homes for entrepreneurial families who needed space to be creative and grow their businesses from home.

I know this to be true as there are a number of historic barns and country houses in this and the adjacent parish, all sitting in their idyllic plot of rural countryside and all accommodating their own businesses on the premises. Many are employing a good number of local people.  How's that for sustainability?

To prove it the local village has a thriving Co-Operative supermarket.  That wouldn't have happened if the local people weren't shopping locally.  There's also a smart Garden Centre with lovely restaurant/coffee shop, a pub, village hall, sports ground, farm shop and lots of successful businesses.  The local village School achieves excellent results too so there's really no need for local people to jump in their cars and go anywhere else - who would want to anyway? It's lovely here.

Apparently lack of housing has forced Planners to persuade Developers to build lots of flats and town houses on small plots to accommodate more families and ease the pressure.  These are targeted at town and city centres to reduce car journeys.  There are even grants available to turn flats into Live/Work units.  It all sounds good on paper and if people need homes then at least they're getting them.

But what about those who don't want to live like that? What about those who want space to breath and be creative? To start small businesses that can expand and employ people?  How many are they really going to be able to pull all this off in the back bedroom of a city centre flat? And how many can afford the risk of taking on separate business premises when they start out?

There's got to be a place for both surely?  So come on decision makers, recognise there's a need for more large, spacious homes to accommodate entrepreneurs who can flourish, grow and expand their businesses and lifestyle without having to keep moving home.

A Devon barn conversion like me is the perfect live/work home and it's a whole lot more than a 'unit' so I wish the powers that be would drop that lifeless term and bring some lifestyle and aspiration back into policy making.