PlanScope Blog – Page 118
Practical guides to UK planning applications: which reports your council expects, permitted development, constraints, costs and how to prepare each document.
Articles – page 118
9434 articlesSequential test search areas and how to define one
A sequential test stands or falls on the area of search. Agree it with the officer, search the plan allocations and brownfield register, and never discount a site because the applicant does not own it.
Treatment train stages and the pollution hazard index
The simple index approach compares pollution hazard indices for each surface with the mitigation indices of the SuDS components in series. Hydrocarbons are usually what decides whether a treatment train passes.
Waste transfer, scrapyards and open storage of materials
Scrapyards and minerals yards are excluded from every use class, while non-hazardous waste transfer has no settled home. What that means for the description of development, the permit interface and the evidence base.
Succession, tenancies and who applies for permission
Planning permission runs with the land, so a tenant, a landlord or a promoter can all apply over the same field. The safeguard is the ownership certificate and the 21 day notice to agricultural tenants.
Redundant farm buildings and the demolition question
Most standalone agricultural buildings can be demolished without a planning application, yet demolition removes any later conversion right and brings asbestos, ecology and restoration duties with it.
Wedding and events venues on a farm
Farm wedding venues sit outside every class in the Use Classes Order, which makes them sui generis and puts them firmly in full application territory. What the application has to prove and how it gets conditioned.
Diversifying into events in a working farmyard
Part 4 of the General Permitted Development Order allows 28 days of temporary use a year on land, but excludes buildings and anything inside a curtilage. Where that leaves farm events, and the evidence a permanent consent needs.
Replacement windows and doors: when they are development
A like-for-like window swap is not development, so no permission is needed. Change the material, opening pattern or frame depth and the position shifts, with flats and listed buildings handled differently again.
Ground mounted solar arrays in a domestic garden
A garden solar frame can be permitted development, but only one per curtilage, capped at 9 square metres of panel and kept 5 metres from the boundary. Where the limits bite and what to do when your array exceeds them.
Budgeting a lawful development certificate application
Fees for lawful development certificates follow a fixed pattern, but the cost that bites is assembling tenancy, council tax and photographic evidence for a historic use. A line-by-line way to budget it.
Upper floor side windows and the obscure glazing condition
The permitted development right for extensions, dormers and side rooflights carries its own glazing condition. Here is exactly which windows it catches, how 1.7 metres is measured, and what happens if clear glass goes in later.
Garage conversions and the parking condition that follows
Converting an integral garage is usually outside the definition of development, and the door infill is normally permitted development. The real obstacle is a parking retention condition on the original estate permission.
Dropped kerbs on a classified road and why PD fails
C roads are classified and nothing about them says so. Why permitted development fails, what the planning application must show, and the section 184 crossing nobody mentions.
Visibility splays onto a rural lane
A speed survey comes before the drawing. How visibility splays are derived on an unclassified lane, how to measure them, and the land control problem nobody plans for.
Which works to a protected tree are exempt from consent
The 2012 Regulations narrowed the exemptions to dead trees and the immediate risk of serious harm. What each one covers, and why the burden of proof sits with you.
Grampian conditions where land is outside your control
Where the neighbouring landowner will not sign a section 106, a Grampian condition is the only mechanism left. What makes one deliverable rather than merely lawful.
Trial trenching: sampling strategy and coverage
There is no statutory trenching percentage. What drives the figure in a curator's brief, why targeted trenching alone is rarely accepted, and how to programme it.
Preliminary ecological appraisal: what it can conclude
A preliminary ecological appraisal answers what might be here and what to find out. Treating it as a clearance certificate is what turns ecology into a programme problem.
Groundwater flooding and the evidence a council accepts
Groundwater risk has to be assembled rather than downloaded. Which data sources exist, how long to monitor, and how to put a single wet winter in context.
Garden centres: retail, horticulture or both
Horticulture sits inside the statutory definition of agriculture. Retail does not. Which element is primary decides the policy tests, the conditions and the enforcement risk.
Flood defence and watercourse works without permission
The Part 13 classes attach to the body carrying out the work, not to the watercourse. What a developer actually needs, and the order to obtain it in.
Re-using a rural building in the Green Belt
Two limbs decide a Green Belt conversion: permanent and substantial construction, and preserving openness. Most applications satisfy the first and lose on the curtilage.
What to submit for a scheme replacing an employment building
Design is not what decides these applications. Marketing at realistic terms, a refurbishment appraisal and the authority's own supply evidence are what carry the case.
Soil translocation and the receptor site search
Most failed translocations had a sound method statement and the wrong receiving site. How to run the search, secure the land and monitor what you move.
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