PlanScope Blog – Page 190
Practical guides to UK planning applications: which reports your council expects, permitted development, constraints, costs and how to prepare each document.
Articles – page 190
9302 articlesEvidence base for a drive-through restaurant
Two issues decide a drive-through: whether the queue stays on site and whether the order point and extract can run without harming amenity. The rest is detail.
Crown reduction against felling: what councils approve
The amenity test favours keeping the tree. Most reductions are refused for a vague specification rather than a weak argument, and most felling applications fail on causation.
Budgeting the discharge of pre-commencement conditions
Permission is not a start on site. Sort the conditions into three piles, price the ones needing field work, and build the discharge programme backwards from your start date.
Holding directions on the strategic road network
A holding direction removes the council's power to issue a decision. It is usually about evidence rather than principle, which means most are resolved by producing the right assessment.
Reading an article 4 direction map and schedule
The direction, the schedule and the map have to be read together. The council's constraints layer is a guide, not the instrument, and the date it took effect governs everything.
Sewer connection rights and capacity refusals
An undertaker cannot refuse a connection simply because its network is busy. It can refuse on two statutory grounds, and it can tell the council to phase your occupation until improvements land.
Structural survey reporting outline for a conversion
The planning-relevant question is whether the building can take the new loads without being substantially rebuilt. Write the report so that answer is findable and evidenced.
Converting an office floor into co-living rooms
Rooms with shared kitchens are not C3 dwellinghouses, so the permitted development route closes and you are making a full application for a use with no class at all.
Evidence base for a block of flats over shops
On a mixed use block you are designing residential amenity around a commercial occupier nobody has met yet. The evidence that matters is whatever fixes the operating envelope.
Street trees in highway works: pits, soil volume, services
The usual reason a street tree fails is rooting volume. Work back from the mature crown, find somewhere to put 40 or 90 cubic metres of usable soil, then settle the service corridor and the maintenance.
Swept path analysis for a refuse vehicle on a new road
Highway and waste collection officers read the same tracking drawing for different reasons. Here is how to choose the design vehicle, dimension the clearances and present a sheet that can be checked in one round.
Curtilage of a listed building: how far protection reaches
Structures inside the curtilage of a listed building that stood before 1 July 1948 are protected as if listed, even after the land is sold off separately. Here is how the test works.
Sequential test for a windfall housing site
A windfall site is unallocated, so nobody applied the sequential test for you at plan-making. This is how to define the area of search and evidence the alternatives an officer will accept.
Parking survey report outline and its data tables
A parking survey lives or dies on the survey area, the capacity method and the nights chosen. Here is the reporting structure, with the three tables that carry the analysis.
Environmental Statement further information and its cost
The consultant's re-drafting fee is the small part. A regulation 25 request brings a fresh 30-day publicity period and often a missed survey season, which is where the money actually goes.
Putting up polytunnels on a horticultural holding
Substantial polytunnel blocks are usually building operations under section 55, and one hectare of tunnels is more than twenty times the Part 6 permitted development ceiling. Here is how to apply for them properly.
Which reports a self-build dwelling on an infill plot needs
An infill plot sits below every major development threshold, so the evidence base is small. The work is knowing which of the trees, ponds, hedges and old garages on your plot pull in an extra survey.
Circular Economy Statement outline and the material passport
Two figures drive a Circular Economy Statement, and the commitment runs past determination. A section-by-section outline, from the baseline audit to post-completion reporting.
Erecting a grain store under agricultural permitted development
A prior notification is not a planning application. The holding size test, the height and position limits, the 28 day period, and the conditions that attach automatically.
Evidence base for a crematorium or burial ground
Both uses fall outside the use classes and both are refused on water or air quality more often than on design. The evidence base, plus a statutory siting rule that catches good sites.
Evidence base for a dog day care business in a rural building
Two things decide a dog day care application: barking levels at the nearest dwelling and how the drop-off works on a rural lane. The evidence base, and the licensing regime beside it.
Evidencing tree canopy cover targets in a scheme
Meeting a canopy cover target on paper is easy. The calculation that survives review states the assessment age, the species crown spread and the soil volume behind every tree.
Travel plan monitoring: baselines, targets and penalties
Work backwards from enforcement. Decide what happens when a target is missed, then write the baseline trigger, the survey timetable and the measures menu that prove it.
SuDS treatment trains for a car park
Attenuation and water quality are separate questions. How to build a treatment train from permeable paving, bioretention and swales, and where a separator actually belongs.
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