PlanScope Blog – Page 148
Practical guides to UK planning applications: which reports your council expects, permitted development, constraints, costs and how to prepare each document.
Articles – page 148
9378 articlesSite set up checklist before works begin on a treed plot
Protective fencing goes up before demolition, clearance or the first delivery. The conditions to discharge, the fencing specification, and the sequence that signs a site off.
Quality standards and deficiency mapping in open space work
Quantity, accessibility and quality are three tests, not one. How to build a scoring matrix assessors agree on, separate quality from value, and map deficiency by population.
Class Q barn conversion prior approval: the tests that fail
Class Q permits a conversion, not a rebuild. The structural test, the agricultural use evidence, the location judgement and the design points that decide these applications.
Green Belt boundaries: checking and reading them
The adopted policies map is the only authority on a Green Belt boundary. How to check it, what inset villages change, and why farm buildings are not brownfield.
Loss of a public house and Article 4 protection
Since 2017 every pub conversion and demolition needs permission. How sui generis status works, what an asset of community value listing achieves, and which objections count.
Structural engineer competence for a building in poor repair
Chartered status, conservation accreditation and a one page brief decide whether a structural report is useful. What to ask before appointing, and how to read the limitations.
Waterlogged deposits and why they change the approach
Anoxic deposits preserve timber, leather and environmental records that dry sites lose. Why mitigation becomes a groundwater question, and what monitoring has to cover.
Pulling local plan policies from a council's own data
The development plan is rarely one document. How to list the right documents, read the policies map for a parcel, and record references that survive scrutiny.
Green Belt refusals and building the special circumstances case
Very special circumstances means the harms, added together, are clearly outweighed. How to identify the harms an inspector will find and weigh your case against them.
Receptor selection for a daylight study in a terraced street
Receptor selection decides a daylight result before modelling starts. The screening test, room hierarchy, multi-window rules and an illustrative schedule for eight houses.
Compartmentation drawings in a fire safety strategy
Compartment lines, resistance periods, travel distances and appliance access decide how many units a core can serve. The drawing content, and what to fix before planning.
Class G and Class H: flues, chimneys, antennas and dishes
Class G covers flues and vent pipes, Class H covers antennas. The height limit, the designated land restriction, the number and size limits, and why flats get neither.
Scheduled monuments and their setting in decisions
Scheduling protects mapped remains under the 1979 Act. Setting is a planning question. How the two regimes divide, and what evidence each one wants.
The ten year rule for change of use immunity
Ten years of continuous unauthorised use makes a change of use lawful. The continuity test, the evidence that satisfies it, and how concealment defeats the claim.
Transport planner, highway engineer or traffic consultant
A transport planner writes the assessment, a highway engineer draws the access, a traffic engineer models the junction. How to tell them apart and brief them properly.
Industrial heritage: mills, kilns and adaptive reuse
A mill or kiln takes its interest from how it worked. How to assess process significance, handle fixed machinery in law, and plan daylight and remediation around retained fabric.
Using MAGIC to build a constraints layer list
MAGIC covers ecology, landscape and soils. It carries nothing on flood zones, listed buildings or Green Belt. How to run the check, record the versions and fill the gaps.
Pre-application enquiry pack for a rural conversion
A pre-application response is only as good as the questions you ask. The plans, photographs, constraints table and numbered questions that get a usable written answer on a rural conversion.
Heritage refusals and the statutory duty on appeal
Heritage appeals turn on considerable importance and weight. How to characterise harm precisely, evidence public benefits, and set out a balance an inspector can follow.
Crack pattern interpretation in a structural survey
Crack geometry, not width, points to a cause. How damage is classified, how seasonal clay movement is separated from progressive failure, and what a planning file needs.
Converting historic farm buildings without losing significance
The heritage case for a barn conversion turns on volume, openings and curtilage. Get those three right and most of the rest of the application follows.
Downloading a site boundary as GeoJSON for an application
A digital red line takes ten minutes to produce and saves the same ten minutes for every consultant on the job. It also catches a wrong site area before validation.
Reasons for refusal that fail the precision test
A decision notice has to state the reasons clearly and precisely and specify the policies relied on. Plenty do not, and that changes how the appeal should be run.
Worked levy calculation for an extension with a garage
Most householder extensions fall outside the levy because of the 100 square metre minor development rule. An attached garage is exactly what pushes a scheme over it.
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