PlanScope Blog – Page 144
Practical guides to UK planning applications: which reports your council expects, permitted development, constraints, costs and how to prepare each document.
Articles – page 144
9385 articlesPermitted development on a site with a tree order
The exemption that lets you do tree work to build something applies to planning permission granted on an application and excludes permission granted by a development order. Permitted development is the latter.
Battery storage on farmland: noise, fire and grid limits
Electricity storage sits outside the national infrastructure regime in England, so these schemes are local applications. Noise at night, the fire service response, land grade and landscape effects decide them.
Class M or Class MA for a shop to homes conversion
Class MA takes a Class E shop to flats subject to a 1,500 m2 cap, two years of prior use and three months of vacancy. Class M is now a narrow residual right, but it does permit building work.
Proving the lawful existing use of a building
A certificate of lawfulness is decided on evidence, not merits. What to gather, how the enforcement time limits changed, and why the certificate pays for itself.
Solar farms and agricultural land grade: the sequential case
National policy prefers poorer quality land where agricultural land must be developed. How to survey the grade properly and document the search that justifies the site.
Hedgerow units and the rules you cannot trade around
Area habitat units cannot compensate for lost hedgerow. How hedgerow types and condition are scored, what the trading rules allow, and where layouts go wrong.
Residual flood risk: writing about breach and blockage
Residual risk is the section consultees read hardest. Naming each failure mechanism, testing it proportionately and saying who carries the duty afterwards.
Development adjoining a canal or navigable waterway
A canal frontage adds a landowner, a statutory consultee and an engineering constraint. What the waterway authority asks for and how to programme around it.
Building over a public sewer under permitted development
Planning rights and the sewerage undertaker's consent are separate regimes. Finding the pipe, agreeing the build over, and what to do when diversion is the only option.
The planning unit and why it decides the use class question
Identify the planning unit before you reach for the Use Classes Order. The occupation test, physical separation, composite uses and what the evidence has to show.
Free range poultry units and ammonia assessment
Ammonia deposition on designated habitats decides most poultry applications. Screening distances, critical loads, dispersion modelling and mitigation that stands up.
Timing vegetation clearance around the bird nesting season
The Wildlife and Countryside Act protects a nest while it is in use, whatever the date. How to check, supervise, record and programme site clearance.
Site-specific flood assessment against the strategic one
The council's strategic assessment and your own site-specific one do different jobs. How to use the first to cut the cost of the second, and where its data runs out.
Nitrate vulnerable zones and what they mean for development
Designation is farm regulation rather than a planning constraint, but it decides whether a new livestock building has anywhere to put the slurry. What to calculate and submit.
Bin stores, bike stores and cabinets at a block of flats
Blocks of flats have almost no permitted development rights in their curtilage. What survives, when a store is development at all, and how to get one approved.
A house becoming a day nursery: the C3 to E(f) route
There is no permitted development route from Class C3 to Class E(f). What a nursery application has to prove on traffic, noise and amenity, and the conditions to offer.
Manege applications: drainage, lighting and landscape
A manege is not agricultural development, so it needs full permission. Applications turn on surface water, floodlighting and how the arena sits in the landform.
Trial trenching percentages and what triggers excavation
Evaluation sample percentages are set by the curator in a written scheme of investigation. What drives the figure, and which results escalate a site to full excavation.
What a negative preliminary roost assessment really means
Only a negligible suitability result with no evidence found closes the bat question. Low, moderate and high all trigger emergence surveys in a season that closes in September.
Basement flood risk and pumped drainage
Basement dwellings sit in the highly vulnerable category, so the flood zone decides the principle and the pump design decides the detail. What to show in the assessment.
Town or village green registration and a development site
Registration as a town or village green stops development without compensation. The statutory test, the trigger events that block an application and the deposits that protect a site.
Air conditioning units and external plant on a house
Air conditioning is not covered by the microgeneration classes, so whether you need permission turns on external appearance, and whether you get it turns on noise.
Live-work units and how councils describe the use
The Use Classes Order has no category for live-work, so the description on the application form decides the policy tests, the conditions and the levy. Here is how to choose it and evidence it.
Livestock buildings within 400 metres of a dwelling
Agricultural permitted development does not cover a livestock building or slurry store within 400 metres of a protected building. Here is how the restriction works, how to measure it, and what a full application needs.
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