In an application validated by Wealden District Council last week, Gun Brewery is seeking permission for features at Hawthbush Farm in Gun Hill.
According to its agents, the brewery’s application seeks “regularisation of some breaches of planning control identified by the council enforcement department at the site”.
The council’s enforcement team says it had invited the business to make the application.
As a result, the brewery is seeking retrospective planning permission for: a 20kw solar array; an outdoor seating area/stretch tent; and a more intensive use of its tap room than allowed by the site’s original planning permission.
Permission is also being sought to improve the brewery’s parking area, laying down a crushed stone surface with enough spaces for up to 60 vehicles. This element of the proposal is partly-retrospective, the applicant’s agent says.
In the application, the brewery’s agent said: “The council is invited to approve this renewable energy proposal and the intensification of the existing tap room use … to enable the continued contribution of the brewery site to the rural and tourist economy of this rural area that has been operating for a number of years without detriment to the wider area and creating a thriving alternative facility in the district.”
The applicant secured planning permission for its current brewery building in 2020, replacing its then existing set up elsewhere on the farm.
At the time, the tap room had been expected to be “incidental and ancillary to the main brewery use”.
But, the application says, council enforcement officers consider the way the taproom now operates to go “beyond an incidental use”.
As a result, the brewery is seeking permission for the “extended use” of the tap room reflecting the way it is now used. The application notes how this will include the sale of food from mobile food wagons and the sale of drinks not produced on site.
But the brewery is also offering a condition to control when the tap room can be open to the public.
The brewery says this condition could limit the site’s hours of operation to: between 4pm and 10pm Wednesday to Friday; between noon and 10pm on Saturdays; and between noon and 5pm on Sundays and bank holidays.
The suggested condition would also see the tap room remain closed on most Mondays and Tuesdays (with the exception of bank holidays).
The application is currently open for public consultation until May 8. The council currently intends to determine the application by June 9.
For further information see application reference WD/2026/0513/FR on the Wealden District Council website.
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