PlanScope Blog – Page 239
Practical guides to UK planning applications: which reports your council expects, permitted development, constraints, costs and how to prepare each document.
Articles – page 239
9179 articlesEIA screening or scoping: two different questions
Screening and scoping are separate procedures under the EIA Regulations 2017. Screen first, scope only if the answer is positive, and never assume a negative screening ends the survey work.
Planning permission for a community garden or allotments
Growing food on land is often outside the definition of development. The sheds, the parking, the fencing and the soil testing are where allotment schemes actually need consent.
Design vehicles and choosing the right one for a layout
The design vehicle decides your turning head, your carriageway width and sometimes your plot count. Here is how to choose it and where the real dimensions come from.
Reports for a site with a watercourse along the boundary
A watercourse on the boundary brings flood risk, ecology and tree evidence into the application, and a separate land drainage consent that planning permission does not cover.
Foul flow calculations in a Foul Sewage Assessment
Population equivalent, peak factors and infiltration decide whether your foul connection is accepted. Here is how the calculation is built and what the undertaker does with it.
Deliverable and developable sites in housing supply
Deliverable means a realistic prospect of delivery within five years. Developable is a softer, longer test. Most supply arguments at appeal turn on a handful of large sites.
Reports for a scheme crossing 2,500 square metres
At 2,500 square metres the transport evidence steps up to a full assessment and retail impact testing bites. Several other requirements cluster at the same scale.
Soil sampling density in an ALC survey
The number and spacing of observations decides how much weight an ALC grading carries. On sites where best and most versatile land is in issue, thin sampling is challenged.
Greenfield run-off rates and how they are calculated
The greenfield rate sets the discharge a development is allowed, and therefore the attenuation volume the layout has to accommodate. One number, a great deal of consequence.
Reports the tenth dwelling adds to a scheme
The tenth unit adds five weeks, an affordable housing obligation, the full biodiversity metric and a likely committee decision. Price that before the land deal.
Odour impact criteria in an Odour Assessment
Odour has no single statutory limit in planning. The criteria section chooses the benchmark, applies it to identified receptors and decides everything that follows.
Background sound level and how a survey establishes it
Background sound level is the A-weighted level exceeded for 90 per cent of an interval. Most disagreements in a BS 4142 assessment come down to how it was established.
Writing a consultant brief that avoids scope creep
Scope creep comes from briefs that describe a subject rather than a deliverable. Define the purpose, the rounds of review and the exclusions before anyone quotes.
Building a constraints appraisal from public datasets
A constraints appraisal is a dated record of every dataset you checked and what it showed. It finds the constraint that changes the project while changing it still costs nothing.
Discharging a condition or varying it under section 73
Discharging a condition satisfies it as written. Section 73 grants a new permission without it. The difference decides your fee, your timetable and whether obligations still bind.
Reports for a nine dwelling scheme below the major threshold
Staying at nine units shortens determination and removes affordable housing in most areas. It does not remove biodiversity net gain, drainage evidence or the highway authority's questions.
Screening and scoping sections of an Environmental Statement
Screening decides whether EIA applies. Scoping decides what the Environmental Statement must examine. Both are settled months before the document is written, and both constrain it.
The planning unit and how its boundary is drawn
The planning unit is the area compared before and after when testing for a material change of use. Move the boundary and the same facts produce the opposite answer.
Professional indemnity insurance and why it matters to you
Professional indemnity insurance responds to the policy in force when a claim is made, not when the work was done. That single feature decides whether you have a remedy.
Checking sewer records and the water undertaker position
An asset location search tells you whether a public sewer crosses your plot. What it does not tell you is exactly where, which is why verification on the ground matters.
Social Infrastructure Assessment or Health Impact Assessment
A social infrastructure assessment quantifies demand on schools, health and open space. A health impact assessment appraises wider determinants of health. They answer different policy questions.
Reports for a self-build dwelling on a garden infill plot
A single self-build house on garden land needs a shorter document set than most people expect. The tree survey and the biodiversity exemption are the two that catch applicants out.
The remediation strategy in a Phase 2 contamination report
The remediation strategy is the part of a Phase 2 report a council enforces. It has to close every pollutant linkage with methods, criteria and verifiable evidence.
Trip rates and how TRICS data is used in an assessment
A trip rate is only as good as the sites it came from. The filters applied to the database decide whether a highway authority accepts the transport assessment built on it.
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