PlanScope Blog – Page 178
Practical guides to UK planning applications: which reports your council expects, permitted development, constraints, costs and how to prepare each document.
Articles – page 178
9324 articlesGround parameters inside a Geotechnical Assessment
A characteristic value is a cautious estimate, not an average. How the ground model and parameter table are built, and which parts of the report planning actually needs.
Refuse collection and delivery noise at unsocial hours
Reversing alarms, tail lifts, shutters and cages over block paving are the noise. Designing those out is what supports an earlier delivery hour than the standard condition.
Highway drainage connections and the adoption agreement
Highway drains are not sewers, and the right to connect to a public sewer does not extend to them. Who adopts what, and why the ownership plan comes first.
A private menage: siting, surfacing and lighting
Levelling, drainage and surfacing are engineering operations, and recreational horse keeping is not agriculture. What a menage application has to cover, and what gets refused.
Root protection areas in a BS 5837 tree report
Twelve times the stem diameter, capped at 707 square metres. How that figure shapes a layout, and the questions worth asking your arboriculturist before it does.
Class Q after the 2024 amendments: what changed
The May 2024 amendments doubled the number of dwellings Class Q allows and capped each at 150 square metres. The structural test and the designated land exclusions did not change.
Student accommodation contributions and nomination agreements
Nomination agreements and contributions in lieu of affordable housing drive the economics of a student scheme. Both are negotiable, and some requests fail the statutory tests.
Structural evidence for converting a chapel or mill
Tall masonry walls with little between them behave differently from a house. What the appraisal has to establish before a conversion layout is fixed.
Artificial lighting and amenity to bedroom windows
Obtrusive light is judged against vertical illuminance limits that change with the environmental zone and the curfew. Getting the zone right settles most of the argument.
Music noise level conditions and how they work
A music noise condition needs a descriptor, a reference level, a position and a method. Inaudibility conditions fail all four tests and leave an operator permanently exposed.
Drainage on a site over abandoned mine workings
Over shallow mine workings, soakaways can wash fines into voids, drive mine gas and mobilise contaminants. What replaces infiltration, and what the submission has to prove.
Seasonal worker accommodation on a fruit farm
Seasonal accommodation is assessed as ancillary to the farm business, not as housing. The caravan licensing exemption is the first thing to test, then a temporary permission.
The further survey section of an ecological appraisal
The recommendations section of an ecological appraisal sets your programme. What a walkover can and cannot conclude, and which surveys have to happen before the application is decided.
Section 73B: the minor variation route and what it changes
Section 73B of the 1990 Act can vary the description of development, which section 73 cannot. What the substantially different effect test asks, and what to check before relying on it.
Rural exception sites and the obligation that secures them
A rural exception site stands on evidenced parish need and a section 106 agreement that ties occupancy down in perpetuity. The agreement is where these schemes are won or lost.
Sustainable drainage and carbon: the overlap
Attenuation is a volume problem, and manufactured volume carries a carbon cost. Comparing tanks, basins, swales and permeable paving across construction and thirty years of maintenance.
Underpinning a neighbour's wall: consents and liabilities
Underpinning engages planning, the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 and the common law right of support. The notice periods cannot be compressed, so the calendar comes first.
Overshadowing of allotments, orchards and growing space
The two hour test on 21 March measures whether people can sit outside, not whether a plot can grow food. What to ask for instead, and how to present the loss.
Choosing survey dates that produce valid data
A baseline measured in the wrong week describes a place that does not exist. Choosing survey dates, recording weather and knowing when the data has to be thrown away.
Trash screens: when a council will refuse one
A trash screen is a flood risk as well as a mitigation. Authorities refuse screens where the blockage case is not modelled or the maintenance duty has no owner.
The priority habitat inventory and what it means for a site
A priority habitat polygon is a flag, not a designation. It triggers survey work, and where it turns out to be right it can hold most of a site's biodiversity baseline units.
Proving the five hectare test for agricultural rights
Part 6 agricultural permitted development turns on the size of the unit you occupy. Here is what counts towards five hectares, what Class B allows below it, and the evidence to keep.
Indoor golf and simulator venues in vacant retail
A golf simulator venue in a former shop normally moves within Class E, which means no permission for the use. The application, if there is one, turns on structure-borne noise, the bar and the plant.
Third party involvement in someone else's appeal
Neighbours and parish councils can take part in an appeal they did not lodge. The deadlines are short, and householder appeals work differently from written representations.
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