Walkthrough: a takeaway refused on odour and resubmitted

A hot food takeaway is a sui generis use, so moving into a former shop or a restaurant unit needs planning permission in its own right. This illustrative walkthrough follows one that was refused on odour and extraction grounds and granted at the second attempt, eleven months later, with a different flue route and a specified abatement system. The use was never the problem. The duct was.

Read the sequence in order, because the mistakes were made in the first fortnight and paid for over the following year.

The unit, the proposal and the first application

The unit was a 62 m² former sandwich shop at the end of a terrace of five commercial units, with two flats above and a residential street behind. The proposal was a charcoal grill and fried chicken operation, open until midnight, with delivery platform collections.

The first application was submitted with a floor plan, an elevation showing a 300mm diameter duct running up the rear elevation to just above first floor window height, and a two-page statement describing a grease filter and a carbon filter. No odour risk assessment. No noise assessment for the fan. No detail of the discharge velocity or the termination height.

It was validated, consulted on, and refused thirteen weeks later. Nine objections came in from the flats and the street behind.

The refusal reasons and the officer report

The decision notice carried two reasons. The first was that the proposed extraction arrangement had not been shown to provide adequate control of cooking odours, to the detriment of the amenity of nearby residential occupiers. The second was that the proposal failed to demonstrate that noise from plant would not harm residential amenity.

Read what those reasons actually say. Neither is a refusal of the use. Both are evidential: the applicant had not shown something. That is the most recoverable kind of refusal, and the officer report said as much, noting that the environmental health officer had requested an odour risk assessment and a scheme of abatement and had not received one.

The report also recorded that the officer would have been content to recommend approval with conditions had the technical evidence been submitted. Applicants read that sentence as encouraging. It is also a record of thirteen weeks and a fee spent for nothing.

Why the first flue scheme failed

Four problems, each of which would have been enough on its own.

The termination height was far too low. Guidance on commercial kitchen extract systems expects the discharge to terminate at high level, typically at least a metre above the eaves or ridge of the building and of any nearby buildings that could be affected, discharging vertically. A duct stopping at first floor window height on a rear elevation with flats above discharges directly into bedroom windows.

The duct diameter was too small for the kitchen, which meant either an inadequate extract rate or a velocity high enough to generate fan and airflow noise.

The abatement was asserted rather than specified. A grease filter and a carbon filter is a description, not a specification. There was no odour risk assessment establishing what level of abatement the cooking type, the kitchen size and the receptor distances required.

And the duct route crossed part of the building outside the demise, which the applicant had not checked.

Redesigning the extraction and the abatement

The second scheme started with an odour risk assessment, carried out by a ventilation specialist, following the recognised approach for commercial kitchen exhaust systems.

The assessment classified the risk using the cooking processes, the kitchen size and the proximity of the nearest sensitive receptors, and that classification determined the abatement required. For a charcoal grill and deep frying with flats directly above, the outcome was a multi-stage system rather than filters alone.

The specified system comprised:

• Grease filtration at the canopy, with a defined grade and a cleaning schedule
• An electrostatic precipitator sized to the airflow
• An activated carbon stage with a stated bed depth and a replacement interval
• A fan with specified duty and an in-line attenuator
• A vertical discharge terminating above ridge level, with the efflux velocity stated

The Ventilation/Extraction Statement set all of that out with the duct route on a drawing, and a separate Odour Assessment carried the risk classification and the reasoning behind the abatement selection. The fan noise was dealt with in a short Noise Impact Assessment using a rating level approach against the measured background at the nearest facade.

The pattern of objection and response is the same one that appears in a commercial extraction system and the odour objection, and the lesson transfers: the specification is the application.

Freeholder consent for the external duct

The duct had to run up the rear elevation and terminate above the ridge, which meant fixings into a wall the tenant did not control and a termination above a roof the tenant did not control.

The lease demised the ground floor internal area only. The freeholder's consent was needed for the fixings, the penetration through the parapet and the ongoing access for cleaning and filter replacement. That consent took nine weeks to obtain and came with conditions of its own: a specified fixing method, a contribution to the buildings insurance premium, and an obligation to reinstate at lease end.

Two things follow for anyone in the same position. Start the freeholder conversation before the planning drawings are finalised, because a refused fixing changes the route and the route changes the application. And note that planning permission does not grant any right to carry out the works. An applicant with permission and no landlord consent has a worthless permission.

Ownership certificates on the application form also have to be right. Where the duct crosses land in other ownership, the correct certificate and the required notice to the other owner are not optional, and getting them wrong invalidates the application.

Hours and delivery rider management

The objections were about smell first and about riders second, and the second grew louder during the consultation period.

The negotiated position had four parts. Closing at 11pm rather than midnight, Sunday to Thursday, with midnight on Friday and Saturday. A designated rider waiting area inside the unit rather than on the footway. An agreement that collections would be from the front of the unit and not from the rear service area adjoining the residential street. And a litter patrol of a defined radius at stated intervals, written into a short management plan.

The hours compromise cost the operator trade and bought the permission. Whether that is the right trade is a commercial judgement and not a planning one, but it is worth making deliberately rather than conceding it at committee.

One honest limitation: delivery rider behaviour is hard to control through a planning condition, and conditions requiring riders to behave in a particular way are weakly enforceable. What is enforceable is the physical arrangement, the hours and the litter obligation.

The second application and the conditions

The resubmission went in with the odour risk assessment, the ventilation statement with a full specification and duct drawing, the noise assessment, the management plan, revised elevations showing the termination above ridge level, and a covering letter mapping each refusal reason to the evidence that answered it. The environmental health officer confirmed no objection within three weeks.

Permission was granted with conditions covering approval of the extraction scheme in full before first use, installation in accordance with the approved scheme, a maintenance and filter replacement regime with records to be kept and made available on request, the plant noise limit, the hours of opening, the litter management obligation, and no amplified sound audible at the nearest residential facade.

The maintenance condition is the one operators forget. A carbon stage at the end of its life performs like no carbon stage at all, and a complaint two years after opening will be investigated against the records the condition requires you to keep. Put the filter replacement dates in the same diary as the gas safety check.

Enter your postcode on PlanScope to see which reports a hot food use is likely to need before you submit, rather than after a refusal.

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