PlanScope Blog – Page 150
Practical guides to UK planning applications: which reports your council expects, permitted development, constraints, costs and how to prepare each document.
Articles – page 150
9374 articlesHistoric paving, setts and kerbs in conservation areas
Historic setts and York stone paving are usually highway land, where resurfacing is not development and the conservation area duty does not reach. The controls are elsewhere.
Costs applications for procedural unreasonableness at appeal
Costs at appeal follow unreasonable behaviour, not the result. Procedural unreasonableness is the easier case to make, and it still needs evidence of wasted expense.
Finding and reading a local plan policies map online
The policies map shows where each local plan policy applies. Reading it properly takes ten minutes and saves the two most expensive surprises in a householder application.
Overheating reporting for a single aspect south facing flat
A single aspect south facing flat is the hardest overheating case in the book. The route you choose and the honesty of your ventilation assumptions decide whether it passes.
Capacity confirmation letters in a utilities assessment
A utilities assessment is only as good as the letters behind it. Five enquiries, raised early and read properly, will tell you whether the programme is deliverable.
Small children's homes and the Class C2 boundary
A two or three bed children's home can be a dwellinghouse in planning terms or a residential institution. Shift patterns decide it more often than bedroom numbers do.
Professional indemnity cover: what to check before you appoint
A consultant's insurance is the only thing standing between a defective report and your own balance sheet. Check the certificate, the basis of cover and the cap before work starts.
Removing, retaining and reinstating chimney stacks
Chimney stacks are assessed twice over: once for what they contribute to the roofscape, and once for what removing the breast below does to the building.
Reading planning statistics for determination times
The quarterly statistics tell you how often an authority decides in time. They do not tell you how long your application will actually take, and the gap is mostly extensions of time.
Ground (f) appeals and excessive enforcement requirements
Ground (f) is not a second bite at the merits. It attacks the requirements of the notice against the purpose the council chose, and it is won with a drafted alternative.
Energy statement outline following the four step hierarchy
An energy statement that follows the hierarchy step by step, reporting regulated emissions at each stage, is far harder to argue with than one that leads with the solar array.
Injunction under section 187B or an enforcement notice
An injunction takes the breach out of the planning system and into the courts, where there is no appeal on the merits and non-compliance is contempt.
Per capita demand figures in a water supply assessment
The water efficiency figure in a planning submission is a Building Regulations standard delivered through a planning condition. Getting the route right saves an argument at occupation.
Supported housing and the Class C2 or C3 boundary
The C2 and C3 boundary is decided by the level of care provided and whether residents live as a single household, which is why identical buildings fall on different sides of it.
What a planning agent can do without RTPI membership
Anyone can call themselves a planning consultant and submit your application. Chartered membership changes the accountability, not the legal right to act.
Dishes, aerials and flues on protected buildings
Small external fixings cause a disproportionate number of listed building enforcement cases. The rule that catches people is that consent and planning permission are separate questions.
Using Housing Delivery Test data in a submission
The Housing Delivery Test measurement is a published annual figure with defined consequences. Used well it takes two paragraphs. Used badly it invites a paragraph of rebuttal.
Ground (c) of an enforcement appeal and what it must prove
Ground (c) of a section 174 appeal asserts that what happened was never a breach at all. It is a legal argument with a factual foundation, and the burden sits on you.
Arboricultural method statement for a no dig driveway
A no dig driveway inside a root protection area lives or dies on the method statement. Here is what each section has to say, and where councils reject the wording.
Appeal against non-determination or wait for a decision
An appeal against non-determination hands your application to an inspector and takes it out of the council's hands. Sometimes that is the right call at week eight. Often it is not.
School and surgery capacity tables in a social infrastructure report
The argument in a social infrastructure assessment lives in four tables: yield, existing capacity, forecast capacity and the residual shortfall your scheme actually causes.
The exposure declaration in a telecommunications submission
A telecommunications prior approval fails without the exposure declaration, and succeeds or fails on siting and appearance. Here is what the declaration covers and what the submission needs alongside it.
Evidence pack checklist for a Class Q barn conversion
Most Class Q refusals come down to agricultural use evidence or a structural report that does not answer the right question. Here is the pack that does.
Planning Performance Agreement or an extension of time
An extension of time postpones the decision date and your right to appeal non-determination. A performance agreement buys sequencing and named officer time. Here is when each is worth it.
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