PlanScope Blog – Page 166
Practical guides to UK planning applications: which reports your council expects, permitted development, constraints, costs and how to prepare each document.
Articles – page 166
9345 articlesStatic bat detectors: deployment and data interpretation
Static detectors answer activity questions, not roost questions. Deployment records, classifier limits, verification protocols and the lighting design the data should inform.
Modelling a partially blocked flow control
Lead local flood authorities expect a drainage strategy to show what happens when the flow control blocks. Here is how the scenario is run, what levels it produces and how to present it.
Chance archaeological finds and the Treasure Act
An unexpected find during groundworks triggers a reporting duty under the Treasure Act 1996 and, usually, a planning condition. Here is the sequence that keeps the delay short.
Class Q structural works and what is reasonably necessary
Class Q permits windows, doors, roofs, walls, services and partial demolition, and nothing that amounts to a rebuild. How the reasonably necessary test is applied and what the engineer must show.
What an energy statement can claim for a green roof
A green roof helps with overheating and can lift photovoltaic yield, but it does not improve a Part L U-value. Sorting the energy claims from the drainage, habitat and greening ones.
Holding directions and what happens to your decision
A holding direction suspends a local planning authority's power to grant permission while the Secretary of State decides whether to call the application in. It leaves the power to refuse untouched.
EV charging load and substation capacity in planning
Charging provision rarely gets refused. It eats electrical capacity, and that turns into a substation on your site plan and a reinforcement lead time longer than the determination period.
Planting specification for swales and wetland margins
A swale base and a wetland margin are different growing conditions two metres apart. Here is how to specify planting by zone, and what the maintenance regime has to say to keep it working.
Peer review and second opinions on technical evidence
A second opinion you commission and a review the council commissions at your expense behave very differently. Here is when each is worth it and how to handle a reviewer who disagrees with your consultant.
Class Q: proving the building was in agricultural use
Class Q prior approvals fail on the agricultural use test more often than on structure. Here is what the qualifying date requires, which uses do not count, and what evidence councils accept.
Technical details consent and what it must cover
Permission in principle fixes location, land use and amount. Technical details consent decides everything else and is what actually grants planning permission. Here is what the second application has to contain.
Ground gas protection in a contaminated land assessment
Ground gas needs concentrations and flow rates measured under falling pressure before any protection can be designed. Here is how the classification works and where these assessments fall short.
EIA scoping opinions and how to use one
A scoping opinion sets out what your environmental statement must contain. Here is what to put in the request, how the five week period works, and how to hold the line on scope afterwards.
Deliberate neglect and the heritage balance explained
Policy tells decision makers to disregard the deteriorated state of a heritage asset where neglect caused it. Here is what that means for condition and viability arguments, and how to evidence a real case of decay.
When an ecological impact assessment replaces an appraisal
An appraisal describes constraints. An assessment values features, characterises impacts and concludes on significance. Here are the triggers that move a project from one to the other.
Liability when one party writes and another submits
A report addressed to one client does not create a duty to everyone who reads it. Here is how reliance letters, assignment and disclaimers work, and what to check before you submit someone else's report.
Front garden paving, permeable surfaces and Class F
A front garden hard surface over 5 square metres must be porous or drain to a permeable area within your own curtilage. Here is how Class F works, and why the dropped kerb is a separate consent.
Standby generators and how the carbon is accounted
A standby generator barely registers in Part L compliance. It decides the noise assessment, the air quality case and the conditions you live with. Here is how to build the planning case around that.
Construction dewatering: the consents you actually need
Dewatering an excavation needs an abstraction licence for taking the water and a permit or consent for discharging it. Neither comes from the council, and both take longer than the site programme assumes.
Design code or a design guide supplementary document
A design code in the development plan engages the section 38(6) presumption. A design guide SPD is only a material consideration. That difference in status decides how each behaves in a decision and at appeal.
The ground model in a geotechnical assessment
The ground model is the interpreted picture of strata, groundwater and parameters that everything downstream depends on. Here is what it must establish and where these reports usually fall short.
Operational development under section 55 explained
Operational development covers building, engineering, mining and other operations. Section 55 also lists works that are not development at all, which is a stronger position than a permitted development right.
Aerodrome safeguarding zones and birdstrike risk
Safeguarding covers height, radar, lighting and birdstrike. The birdstrike zone is the one that catches development teams out, because it conflicts with the drainage and net gain features the rest of the system wants.
When Historic England must be consulted on an application
Grade I and II consent applications go to Historic England as of right. Grade II applications only go where demolition is involved. Here is how the triggers work and what they do to the programme.
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