PlanScope Blog – Page 175
Practical guides to UK planning applications: which reports your council expects, permitted development, constraints, costs and how to prepare each document.
Articles – page 175
9329 articlesTemporary stop notice or stop notice: which applies
A temporary stop notice can be served on its own and lasts up to 56 days. A full stop notice rides on an enforcement notice and exposes the council to compensation under section 186.
Functionally linked land outside a European site boundary
The site boundary is a line on a map. The conservation objectives relate to populations, and those populations use fields and flight lines outside the designation.
Grant funding and its treatment in a viability appraisal
Grant improves the residual, which makes it harder to argue for less affordable housing. Understanding additionality and drafting for a grant that does not arrive is the practical work.
Dry riser inlets on a constrained street frontage
The inlet cabinet is 600 mm of steel door that has to appear on your street elevation, within sight of where the fire appliance will stand. Decide where before the elevation is drawn.
Grid connection capacity as a planning constraint
An all-electric scheme with heat pumps and charge points asks far more of the local network than a gas-heated one. Find out what is available before the energy strategy is fixed.
A wedding barn on a working farm
Wedding barn applications are rarely refused on principle. They are refused on midnight noise, a septic tank sized for a farmhouse and a field that turns to mud in October.
Alpacas, llamas and unusual livestock: is it agriculture
Alpacas kept for fleece are livestock and the land stays in agricultural use. Alpacas kept as pets or for trekking are neither, and that changes what you can build.
Section 73B applications to vary a permission
Section 73B was inserted to fix what section 73 cannot do, namely change the description of development. The test is whether the result is substantially different from what was permitted.
Finished floor levels and freeboard: justifying the numbers
A finished floor level is only as good as the design flood level it sits above. Where that level comes from, why the freeboard is what it is, and how to draw it.
Areas of Archaeological Importance and the operations notice
Part II of the 1979 Act still bites in five city centres. If your site is inside one, a six week operations notice runs separately from any archaeology condition on the permission.
Benchmark land value where the site already has consent
Where a site carries an unimplemented permission, the benchmark land value argument turns on whether that permission could actually be built today. Often it could not.
Smoke shaft provision and the shape of the building envelope
Smoke control is treated as a building control matter and then changes the core, the corridor lengths and the roofline. Resolving it after permission is the expensive way round.
Grazing horses or keeping them: the use class line
The statutory definition of agriculture covers the use of land as grazing land but not the keeping of horses for recreation. That single distinction decides whether you need planning permission.
Permitted development rights and the prior approval trap
Several permitted development classes require prior approval before work starts, with deemed consent if the council does not respond in time. The trap is that the clock only runs on a complete application.
Riparian ownership duties on a development site
If a watercourse runs along or through your plot you are probably a riparian owner, with duties you did not agree to and rights that decide whether your drainage strategy can be built.
Checking whether a Tree Preservation Order applies
The council holds the register and has to let you inspect it. What matters after that is which type of order you are looking at, because area orders and woodland orders protect different trees.
Abnormal cost evidence a council's reviewer will accept
Abnormal costs are where most viability appraisals lose credibility. Every line needs a technical report behind it, a quantity, a dated rate and a source, or the reviewer removes it.
Tall building fire safety expectations in London
In London a fire statement is expected on all major development, well below the 18 metre national trigger. Understanding the two overlapping requirements saves a round of resubmission.
Converting a redundant dairy under Class R
Class R lets a redundant farm building take a commercial use without a planning application, up to a cumulative floorspace cap. It permits the use, not the building work, which is where most schemes come unstuck.
Overheating under Part O: the two assessment routes
Approved Document O gives two ways to show a new home will not overheat. The simplified method caps glazing and sets openable areas; dynamic modelling buys design freedom at the price of evidence.
Infiltration testing to BRE Digest 365 and common errors
A single bucket test in a topsoil pit is not an infiltration rate. What the method requires, how the rate is derived, and the mistakes that get results thrown out.
Nutrient neutrality: what a mitigation package must show
In an affected catchment, permission depends on a nutrient budget that shows no net increase in nitrogen or phosphorus reaching the protected site, with mitigation secured for the lifetime of the development.
Carbon offset payments and how they reach a section 106
A carbon offset payment is a planning obligation like any other, which means it has to pass the regulation 122 tests. Here is how the sum is built, secured and challenged.
Ground movement and damage categories for basements
A basement impact assessment stands or falls on the movement prediction. Here is how the staged approach works, what the damage categories mean, and which inputs reviewers test first.
Not sure which documents your council will ask for?
Enter your postcode and PlanScope recommends the right reports for your project, then drafts them in minutes.
Enter your postcode on PlanScope