Tinkers Bubble - News

18 April 2023

Permanent Planning Permission Granted

After 25 year of temporary permission, and nearly 30 years since people first moved on to this site, South Somerset District Council have granted us permanent planning permission! The permission has the same clauses and scope as the previous temporary permissions, and so will make little difference to the appearance and functioning of the Bubble, but this still represents a milestone for us, and for off-grid development in the UK. The process for gaining permanent permission was fairly straightforward, with helpful input from the council's planning department during the pre-application consultation.

We've published an article about the decision and our planning situation on our blog.

The full application (reference 22/03247/FUL), and the council's responce, can be found on their planning portal. Our application letter, which can be found under the 'documents' tab on that link (document title: Supporting Information - Tinkers Bubble Planning Application Cover Letter), gives a good overview of our application and justification.

28 July 2021

Promise Auction Appeal for Steam Engine Repairs

As you may have seen on our steam engine updates, the work required to repair the engine is going to take more money and time than we had originally expected. Phil has had a look at various options available to us, and we have decided to continue with the work as planned. As well as continuing our fundraiser, we are looking at other ways to raise money. Megan has started planning a promise auction, and we are currently requesting promises from our wider community for us to auction off. Please have a look at our request to you here.

19 April 2021

Steam Engine Overhaul

The steam engine has recently left site, for a 3 month trip to a specialist repair yard in Shaftsbury. For more information on the progress of these repairs have a look at our specific page here, and donations towards the £14,000 costs (!) are appreciated here. We look forward to getting the engine back later in the summer - in the meantime the sawmill is not in use, although we do have some stocks of Douglas Fir, 2" Ash boards and 1" Cherry boards still available.

Thank you to everyone who has supported us so far in this project, whether practical or financial.

12 December 2020

Steam Engine Firebox

We have recently had some terrible news about our steam engine. After a routine ten-yearly operation to replace the boiler tubes, the firebox has failed its inspection and will have to be replaced if the engine is to live on. This is a time consuming operation and will cost far more than we can afford.

Please check out our crowd funding campaign

9 April 2016

Planning Permission

Tinkers Bubble has just been granted a further ten years temporary planning permission by South Somerset District Council. Woo-hoo! :)

The council gave the following reasons for accepting our application:

"The proposed development, by reason of its special low impact nature, siting, scale, layout and design, is considered to be an appropriate form of development that should have little impact upon the historic or natural environment or the rural amenities of the area and should not result in any demonstrable harm to residential amenity or visual amenity and to therefore represent a sustainable form of development that accords with the aims and objectives of policies SD1, TA5, TA6, EQ2, EQ3, EQ4 and EQ7 of the South Somerset Local Plan and the provisions of the National Planning Policy Framework."

Full details of the application (including conditions) are available on the SSDC website:

http://www.southsomerset.gov.uk/planningdetails/?id=1505391FUL

19 January 2016

Planning Permission

At the end of last year, we submitted an application for further temporary planning permission. We will post updates when we hear from South Somerset District Council.