PlanScope Blog – Page 192
Practical guides to UK planning applications: which reports your council expects, permitted development, constraints, costs and how to prepare each document.
Articles – page 192
9299 articlesExceedance routing: designing for the storm beyond design
Attenuation sizing does not tell you what happens when the system surcharges. Exceedance routing is a separate drawing, and its absence is a common drainage objection.
Site allocations: what they commit you to
An allocation does not grant permission. It commits you to the quantum, access, infrastructure and masterplan requirements in the policy and its supporting text.
Workshops in a residential curtilage
Class E permits a garden workshop as a building, but not a business inside it. The factors councils weigh, the permitted development limits, and what to do if you have outgrown them.
Conflicts of interest for a technical report author
Applicants' consultants are not neutral, and nobody expects them to be. What destroys the weight given to a report is an interest the reader finds out about later.
On-site biodiversity units against buying off-site
Delivering biodiversity units on site costs developable area and a 30-year liability. Buying off site costs cash at a spatial discount. Here is how to run the comparison properly.
Basement Impact Assessment outline for a London borough
Boroughs audit basement assessments against a fixed sequence. Here is the outline that survives that audit, section by section, with the failures that send documents back.
Consent route for a modular classroom at a school
Three questions decide a modular classroom: does Class M of Part 7 cover it, is a temporary permission right, and does it sit on a playing field?
Evidence base for a basement under an existing house
Digging under a house means disproving three risks: ground movement at the party walls, altered groundwater flow, and construction traffic on a residential street.
Infiltration testing that fails: what to do next
A failed soakaway test changes the drainage strategy and often the layout. How to work out why it failed, whether to retest, and how to justify the next option down the hierarchy.
Ramsar sites and the protection applied in planning
Ramsar sites are protected through planning policy rather than automatically by the Habitats Regulations, but the assessment sequence is the same. Here is how to scope and evidence it.
Car washes on forecourts and open land
Hand car washes need planning permission, a trade effluent consent and a layout that holds the queue on site. Here is what a council and a sewerage undertaker each want to see.
Who signs off a sustainable drainage verification report
Surface water conditions require a verification report before occupation. Who signs it, what evidence it carries, and why almost all of that evidence has to be captured while the trenches are open.
What waiting for the bat survey season costs a scheme
The real cost of bat surveys is the season you lose by asking too late. How to price the holding cost, when a condition will not do, and the licensing routes that shorten the wait.
Lighting Assessment outline to the ILP guidance
The environmental zone decides every limit in a lighting assessment. This outline runs through baseline survey, luminaire schedule, modelling, contour plots and the conditions to offer.
What a trampoline park application has to prove
A trampoline park application is decided on vibration through the building frame, airborne noise, the weekend parking peak and servicing. Here is the evidence councils expect.
Evidence base for a site in an aerodrome safeguarding zone
Inside a safeguarded area the aerodrome operator becomes a consultee and height, reflectivity, lighting and open water decide the application. Here is the evidence base to assemble.
Opening a rooftop bar above an existing pub
Patron noise from a terrace at roof level reaches facades a beer garden never would, and a parapet screen does little for receptors above it. Design that in early.
Evidence base for a site in a coalfield referral area
A coal mining risk assessment is a desk study that tells you what to investigate. Get it done while the layout is still flexible, not after a shaft appears under plot seven.
Amusement arcades and the sui generis position
Amusement arcades sit outside the use classes, so a vacant shop cannot become one without permission. The case is usually won or lost on a frontage survey.
Travel plan coordinators and who prepares the plan
A travel plan creates continuing obligations for the occupier. The coordinator is a named role with survey and reporting duties, usually tied to first occupation.
Losing the self-build CIL exemption and the bill after
Lose the self-build exemption and the whole levy charge becomes payable, undiscounted and due at once. The three year occupation period is where most claims fail.
What to put in a pre-application enquiry pack
Pre-application advice is only as good as the questions. Send a measured survey, a constraints table and numbered questions, and keep the drawings loose.
Planning permission for a swimming pool in a garden
The pool is rarely the problem. A raised deck, a heat pump near the boundary or an excavation inside a root protection area are what turn it into an application.
Evidence base for development near a public sewer
The build over agreement, not the planning permission, is what delays schemes with a sewer on site. Order the records first and run both processes in parallel.
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