PlanScope Blog – Page 252
Practical guides to UK planning applications: which reports your council expects, permitted development, constraints, costs and how to prepare each document.
Articles – page 252
9157 articlesSequestered carbon in timber: reporting it honestly
A whole life carbon assessment showing a negative embodied carbon total has usually dropped the end of life release. Here is how to report timber sequestration so a reviewer can verify it.
Separation distances for waste and composting odour
A separation distance tells you which assessment a waste or composting proposal needs, not whether it will be permitted. Here is how odour and bioaerosol evidence is actually built.
Invasive species on site and the duties that follow
Finding Japanese knotweed does not stop a scheme, but it does create duties over spread, soil handling and site management. Here is what the law requires and what a council will condition.
Tree risk assessment methods and planning decisions
Councils refuse risk-based felling applications when defects are described but risk is never quantified. Here is how a defensible tree risk case is built and presented.
Abnormal loads and access for large components
Once a component exceeds construction and use limits, the route has to be surveyed, structure owners notified and the movement tied down by condition. Here is how that affects a planning application.
Fire safety in a design and access statement
A design and access statement should describe how people enter and leave a building, not restate a fire strategy. Here is the boundary between the two documents and the details officers query.
The Broads and its own planning authority
Sites in the Broads executive area are decided by the Broads Authority, not the district council. Here is what its navigation duty, restricted permitted development rights and tidal flood risk mean for an application.
Supported living, care homes and the C2 to C3 line
The boundary between residential institutions and dwellinghouses is not about the building. It is about how much care is provided and how independently residents live.
Compensation when an Article 4 direction removes rights
Owners hearing about an Article 4 direction often ask about compensation. The statutory right exists, and the notice period councils use means it rarely bites.
Housing land supply and what it changes for applicants
The supply position is an arithmetic exercise with a great deal of judgement inside it. Where it falls short, the decision-making test changes, which is why both sides fight over the trajectory.
Mineral and waste safeguarding on farmland
Safeguarding areas exist so that housing and farm development do not quietly sterilise a sand and gravel resource. On farmland they catch schemes nobody expects them to catch.
Deemed planning permission and the situations that create it
Deemed permission is a narrow, statutory idea that gets used loosely. Knowing the handful of places it does arise saves an expensive misunderstanding.
Air quality neutral and air quality positive requirements
Air quality neutral is a benchmark comparison, not a modelling exercise. Two benchmarks, two sources of emissions, and a design response that is mostly decided by the heating strategy.
Tree canopy cover targets in local plan policy
A canopy cover target looks like a simple percentage until you try to meet one. What counts, when it counts and how it is measured all vary, and none of it matches the biodiversity metric.
Transport evidence for a rural site with no bus service
National policy accepts that opportunities to travel sustainably differ between town and country. Making that argument still takes measured evidence rather than an assertion about rural life.
Local Nature Recovery Strategies and strategic significance
Local Nature Recovery Strategies are not development plan documents, yet they change biodiversity unit arithmetic directly through the metric's strategic significance multiplier.
Structural surveys before buying a conversion project
The survey that tells you whether a conversion is viable costs a small fraction of the deposit. Buyers who skip it find out during demolition, when the price is fixed and the options are not.
What a case officer checks in a daylight report first
A daylight and sunlight report gets ten minutes before it is either trusted or set aside. Those ten minutes are spent on the model and the assumptions, not on the results tables.
Challenging a designation boundary that maps your site wrong
A mapped boundary is evidence, not a fact. Where it is wrong, the route to fixing it runs through the body that published it, and the timescales rarely match a development programme.
Subdividing a commercial unit into two: the planning tests
Section 55 deems the subdivision of a house into flats to be development. There is no equivalent for commercial premises, which is why splitting a shop needs a different analysis.
Hedgerow removal notices and the important hedgerow test
The Hedgerows Regulations 1997 run alongside planning permission, not inside it. Serve the notice, wait the 42 days, and know which criteria make a hedgerow important before you start.
Neighbourhood development orders and community rights
A neighbourhood plan sets policy. A neighbourhood development order grants permission. The difference matters, and it explains why communities make plans and almost never make orders.
SOAEL and LOAEL: using the noise effect levels properly
The effect level hierarchy comes from the Noise Policy Statement for England and deliberately carries no national figures. That is a feature, and most submissions handle it badly.
Soil volume and rooting space for new street trees
Most new street trees die slowly from the roots up. The cause is almost always rooting volume, and it is decided on the drawing long before anyone orders a tree.
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