PlanScope Blog – Page 160
Practical guides to UK planning applications: which reports your council expects, permitted development, constraints, costs and how to prepare each document.
Articles – page 160
9356 articlesEvacuation lifts and what they do to a core layout
Evacuation lifts cost core efficiency through the protected lobby rather than the shaft. Test the core before the planning drawings are fixed.
The damage cost approach to air quality contributions
Air quality contributions are usually calculated from predicted emissions times a published cost per tonne. The errors sit in the assumptions, not the arithmetic.
Prosecution for unauthorised works to a protected tree
Section 210 offences carry unlimited fines, reach contractors as well as owners, and sit alongside an automatic duty to replant that runs with the land.
Powered two-wheeler parking and where it belongs
Powered two-wheeler provision has its own ratio, bay type and siting expectations in adopted parking standards, and it is the line most often left off a layout.
War memorials and the protection they carry
Listed war memorials need consent for relocation or alteration, and undesignated ones carry weight as non-designated heritage assets through their communal value.
External wall materials and the combustibles restriction
Regulation 7(2) bars combustible materials from external walls and specified attachments on relevant buildings, which can make a planning palette undeliverable.
What an Air Quality Management Area adds to an application
An Air Quality Management Area creates no new consent. It changes which local plan policy applies, lowers the assessment threshold and puts occupier exposure in play.
Car club bays: securing them and keeping them viable
Car club obligations fail when no operator will serve the location or when a street bay depends on a traffic order the developer cannot control. Both are fixable in the drafting.
When planning costs fall due on a small housing scheme
Planning payments on a scheme of two to nine dwellings arrive in five clusters over roughly eighteen months. Knowing the order matters more than knowing the totals.
Appealing a refused tree consent decision
A refusal under a Tree Preservation Order can be appealed to the Planning Inspectorate within 28 days, free of charge. Conservation area notices carry no appeal right at all.
Listed street furniture: consent, damage and repair
Small structures such as milestones, pumps and telephone kiosks are listed in their own right. Moving or removing one needs consent, and most damage happens during routine highway works.
Locally listed buildings and the weight they carry
A local heritage list entry needs no consent and removes no permitted development rights, but it changes how every application on the building is judged.
Utility diversions and the cost nobody budgets
A cable across the site or a main under the access is a six figure possibility and a programme item measured in months. This covers surveys, cost liability, quotations, easements and abandoned apparatus.
Vacant building credit or a viability case for fewer homes
The credit is arithmetic, viability is argument. This compares what each achieves, how vacancy and abandonment are tested, what councils challenge, and which to run first.
Felling licences under the Forestry Act and planning consent
Five cubic metres a quarter and two cubic metres sold are the limits that catch most rural owners. This covers the exemptions, the overlap with tree preservation orders, restocking notices and development felling.
Servicing yards: standing, reversing and banksman conditions
Highway officers start with whether the largest vehicle can enter, turn and leave in forward gear. This covers design vehicle choice, swept paths, standing time, servicing noise and pedestrian separation.
Industrial heritage conversions and retained machinery
On a listed industrial building the listing can extend to fixed machinery and curtilage structures. This covers what gives these buildings significance, subdivision, glazing, recording and viability.
Heritage at risk entries and what they signal
An at risk entry gives you published evidence of condition, not a discount on harm. This covers the register's coverage, the A to F priority categories, the deliberate neglect trap and the evidence pack.
Construction management plan conditions and their cost
The cost of a construction management plan is the cost of complying with it for the whole build. This sets out the recurring items, the highway licences it commits you to, and how to negotiate the condition.
Duct termination height for a takeaway extraction system
Officers condition the discharge point more than the filter. This covers termination a metre above the ridge, separation from windows and intakes, routing through third party property and maintenance access.
Trees on neighbouring land that overhang your site
A neighbour's tree can put a root protection area across your whole footprint. This covers surveying without access, reshaping the area, the right to abate an overhang and designing on precautionary assumptions.
Bus stop improvements and the contributions that fund them
Public transport contributions are easy to concede and often unjustified. This tests the usual asks against the statutory obligation tests and sets out the drafting points that decide what they really cost.
Lidar and aerial photography in desk based assessment
Lidar shows surviving relief, aerial photographs show what has been levelled and when. This covers where to get coverage, how to render it, the limits under woodland and the false positives to rule out.
Groundwater abstraction points and the 50 metre rule
A drainage field, slurry store or manure spreading operation must keep 50 metres from a spring, well or borehole used for drinking water. Here is how to find them and what to submit.
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