PlanScope Blog – Page 25
Practical guides to UK planning applications: which reports your council expects, permitted development, constraints, costs and how to prepare each document.
Articles – page 25
9602 articlesConverting a garage block into a mews house
A detached garage block cannot be converted under permitted development. Here is how to evidence the lawful use, solve a single aspect plan, meet space standards and answer the loss of parking.
Which reports an agricultural reservoir needs
A farm reservoir has no floor area to measure, so the document list is driven by earthworks, embankment visibility, hydrology and abstraction. Here is the bundle and the order to produce it in.
Writing the exception test for a flood risk site
The exception test asks two questions, not one. Here is what each limb needs, which flood zone and vulnerability combinations trigger it, and how to keep the planning case apart from the hydraulic evidence.
Engineering operations: when earthworks need permission
Regrading a field, cutting a track or forming a bund counts as an engineering operation under section 55 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. Here is where agricultural permitted development stops and an application starts.
A caravan site extension and licensing alongside planning
Eighteen pitches applied for, fourteen granted. How the landscape assessment, the register condition and the treatment plant arithmetic shaped the permission.
Archaeological evaluation or a geophysical survey
Geophysics maps anomalies fast without breaking ground. Trenching tells you what they are. The sequence matters, and so does the written scheme behind both.
Appealing a refusal by a minerals and waste authority
The appeal route is the same section 78 route. The policy framework, the need evidence and the restoration case are not, and that is where these appeals are decided.
Which reports a cladding remediation application needs
Facade remediation creates no floorspace, so the application turns on appearance, Gateway One fire evidence, bats on the facade and keeping an occupied block liveable.
Trading rules and habitat distinctiveness in net gain
Distinctiveness bands control the trade, not the arithmetic. Like for like, like for better, the three separate modules, and the four ways a positive gain figure still fails.
Operational development: what counts as a building operation
Operational development covers building, engineering, mining and other operations. The exclusions in section 55(2) are narrower than most people assume.
Landscape bonds and maintenance conditions on new schemes
A condition cannot require money, so a landscape bond belongs in a section 106 agreement. What conditions can secure, how the wording works, and what to price.
Irreplaceable habitats and the bespoke net gain route
Ancient woodland and veteran trees sit outside the biodiversity metric entirely. What bespoke compensation means in practice, and why redesign usually beats negotiation.
Structural survey before buying a site with a retained building
On a retained building the survey has to tell you whether your scheme is possible, and what you could not find out before exchange. The second answer costs more.
A doctors surgery extension on a constrained car park
Six parking spaces traded for four clinical rooms. How survey evidence, a staff permit arrangement and retained accessible parking answered the highway objection.
Drainage strategy or a SuDS maintenance plan
Two different documents, two different conditions and two different triggers. The design evidence, the management commitments, and the sequence that satisfies a lead local flood authority.
Changing the description of development before appeal
The description on the application form defines the appeal. If the authority changed it without consent, the inspector may be asked to determine a proposal nobody submitted.
Which reports glamping pods in woodland need
Woodland glamping is decided by trees, not by highways. The buffers, the BS 5837 survey, the no-dig track specification and the ecology seasons that set the programme.
The context section of a BS 4142 assessment
The rating level difference is an initial estimate, not a conclusion. How context is argued properly, where it is abused, and what an officer needs to rely on the result.
The Rochdale envelope and parameter-based outline applications
Parameter-based outline applications work only where the envelope is tight enough to assess. What to fix, how worst case differs by topic, and the conditions that make it bite.
Street naming and numbering after permission is granted
Planning permission does not create an address. Street naming and numbering is a separate council function with its own forms, fees and lead time, and utilities depend on it.
Species conservation strategies and protected site strategies
Two landscape-scale instruments in the Environment Act 2021 aim to replace site-by-site ecology mitigation. What they cover, how they affect licensing, and what still has to be surveyed.
Soil and vent pipe routes in a basement conversion
Where a basement WC sits below the sewer invert, the pumped drainage design decides where the pipe appears on the elevation. The levels, consents and drawings that close the question out.
A beach hut colony and coastal change management
Replacing 22 beach huts inside a Coastal Change Management Area, where a relocation plan and a 25-year time limited permission resolved the policy conflict. Illustrative throughout.
Parking survey methodology: Lambeth or a beat survey
The Lambeth method measures overnight kerb capacity and stress. A beat survey measures daytime occupancy and turnover. Choosing the wrong one is why parking evidence gets set aside.
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