PlanScope Blog – Page 254
Practical guides to UK planning applications: which reports your council expects, permitted development, constraints, costs and how to prepare each document.
Articles – page 254
9153 articlesPoultry units: scale, odour and the screening question
A poultry unit application turns on three thresholds: 500 m2 of new floorspace for EIA screening, 40,000 bird places for an environmental permit and 85,000 broiler places for mandatory assessment.
Discontinuance orders and stopping an existing lawful use
Section 102 of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 lets a council order a lawful use to stop. Confirmation by the Secretary of State and a compensation bill under section 115 explain why it almost never happens.
Sui generis: the uses that belong to no class at all
Article 3(6) puts a list of uses outside the classes entirely, and anything the Order never mentions joins them. No class means no free movement and no permitted change.
Selling part of a holding: certificates and notices
Ownership certificates A to D turn on who owned the land twenty-one days before submission. Selling a field, a verge or a splay changes the answer, and agricultural tenants need their own notice.
Informatives on a decision notice
Informatives sit outside the permission and impose nothing. Read them as a list of the other consents a planning permission does not give you.
Forestry permitted development and what it allows
Forestry permitted development covers buildings and tracks reasonably necessary for forestry, subject to height limits and prior notification. It never permits a dwelling and it says nothing about felling.
Commuted sums and how they are calculated
Commuted sums come out of published formulas, so the arguments that work are about inputs, indexation base dates and payment triggers rather than about whether a sum is payable.
Tree replacement duties and replacement notices
Section 206 imposes a replacement duty the moment a protected tree is removed, including where it was felled lawfully as dead or dangerous. Notices only follow when the duty is ignored.
Cycle parking design to LTN 1/20 on a residential scheme
Cycle stores are judged on geometry before numbers. Stand spacing, aisle width, the door threshold and the route from the street matter more than the headline space count.
How many bat emergence surveys a building needs
A preliminary roost assessment sets the number of bat emergence surveys, not the size of the building. Miss the May to September window and the programme slips by eight months.
Fire safety works to listed buildings
Prescriptive fire guidance sits badly on historic fabric. A performance-based strategy, in-situ door upgrades and careful detection routes usually deliver the safety case with less harm.
Rooflights and glazing in conservation areas
Conservation officers judge rooflights by roof slope and frame profile before they consider daylight. Reinstating a lost window is often a stronger proposal than cutting a new opening.
Basement development and the flood risk objection
Flood objections to basements start with vulnerability classification, and the use below ground decides the outcome rather than the waterproofing. Groundwater, surface water and sewer backflow each need separate answers.
When two designations overlap and the tests conflict
Green Belt, flood zones, heritage duties and habitats tests are different shapes of test, and none absorbs the others. Sequence them from hardest gateway to softest balance.
Offices to residential: evidencing the Class E use period
Class MA prior approval turns first on documents: two continuous years of Class E use and three months of vacancy. Rating records, utilities and leases each prove something different.
Proving ten years of breach of an occupancy condition
Ten years of continuous breach of an agricultural occupancy condition can be confirmed by a lawful development certificate. The application is decided on facts, so the chronology is the whole case.
Section 106 monitoring fees
Monitoring fees cover the officer time spent checking that planning obligations are performed. The basis is usually published, and the structure of the agreement often affects the figure more than the rate does.
The 30 year habitat management and monitoring plan
The biodiversity gain condition requires gains to last 30 years. The management and monitoring plan is how a council satisfies itself they will, and vague prescriptions are the commonest reason it is refused.
Felling licences and the quarterly volume exemption
The felling licence exemption allows five cubic metres of standing timber a calendar quarter with a two cubic metre sale limit. It gives no protection against a Tree Preservation Order.
Securing and monitoring a travel plan through section 106
Conditions cannot require payments, so travel plan fees, coordinators and bonds move into the section 106 agreement. The remedial measures menu matters more than the bond figure.
External wall materials and the samples condition
The planning samples condition controls appearance, regulation 7 controls what may burn. On buildings above 18 metres the palette narrows first, so fix the materials before the elevation.
Obscure glazing conditions and when they work
Obscure glazing conditions fail on precision, necessity and enforceability more often than they should. Raising a cill or turning a window usually beats any condition about glass.
Exception test evidence: the two limbs in practice
The exception test asks for wider sustainability benefits to the community and for a development that is safe for its lifetime. Most failures come from writing the first limb about the applicant rather than the community.
Safeguarding for railways and strategic infrastructure
A lineside site carries two consent tracks: the planning application with its statutory consultation, and the infrastructure owner's own asset protection approvals for piling, oversail, fencing and drainage.
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