PlanScope Blog – Page 268
Practical guides to UK planning applications: which reports your council expects, permitted development, constraints, costs and how to prepare each document.
Articles – page 268
9128 articlesThe junction capacity section of a transport assessment
Junction capacity modelling decides most highway objections. Here is how to scope the junctions, agree growth and committed development, and read the capacity and queue outputs a case officer will question.
The fee exemption for disabled persons adaptations
Works that provide access or facilities for a disabled person can carry no planning fee at all under the 2012 fees regulations. The claim is made at submission, and the evidence you attach decides whether it is accepted.
Interested party representations at appeal
Your objection to the application goes to the Planning Inspectorate automatically. Whether you can add anything depends on the appeal procedure, and householder appeals accept nothing new at all.
Reports for a new house on a backland garden plot
A house on a subdivided garden needs a smaller evidence base than a greenfield plot, but a specific one. Access, trees, drainage and the biodiversity baseline decide what you commission and in what order.
Front garden parking and permeable surfacing
Front garden parking is permitted development under Class F only where the surface is porous or the run-off is kept inside your boundary. The dropped kerb is a separate consent under the Highways Act 1980.
What the householder application fee actually covers
The householder fee buys a determination and nothing else. Which works sit inside the category, and the four exclusions that invalidate applications.
The appeal questionnaire and the council's statement
The questionnaire arrives early and is largely factual. Read it against the reasons for refusal, because the gaps between them are where appeals are won.
Rating penalties in a BS 4142 assessment
The correction is where measurement meets judgement, and where a BS 4142 assessment either shows its working or invites a challenge it cannot answer.
Front porches within permitted development limits
Three limits govern a porch under permitted development, and the two metre highway separation rules out more front porches than the size limit ever does.
Planning appeals to the Planning Appeals Commission
Northern Ireland appeals go to the Planning Appeals Commission, not the Planning Inspectorate. The deadlines, procedures and policy framework are all different.
Reading reasons for refusal before you decide to appeal
A refusal notice is two paragraphs that decide your next move. Separating what the council found from what it concluded is where that decision starts.
Habitat condition assessment in a biodiversity metric
Condition multiplies straight into the habitat unit figure, so it is where baselines are challenged. Working the criteria sheets is what makes a call defensible.
Hip to gable conversions and where they fail
A hip to gable is permitted development on most houses. The volume it consumes, and what it does to a semi-detached pair, is where the trouble starts.
Objecting to a certificate of lawfulness application
Amenity objections carry no weight on a lawful development certificate. Dated factual evidence contradicting the applicant's account does.
Foundation design on made ground and former industrial sites
Fill varies over metres, not hundreds of metres. The design has to cope with that variation, and differential settlement is the failure it must prevent.
Presenting daylight results a committee can read
The numbers in a daylight report are usually right. What loses the argument is that nothing tells a councillor which of the 300 rows matters.
Walkthrough: a bat roost found before a demolition
Droppings on a beam in February meant a demolition in October. Where the seven months went, and what could have been done differently.
Dwellings in the countryside in Northern Ireland
Northern Ireland has no presumption to balance. A countryside dwelling must fit one of a narrow set of policy routes, each with its own evidential tests.
Proofs of evidence and rebuttals at inquiry
A proof is a witness's own evidence, not a second statement of case. The timetable, the summary convention and when an inspector will accept a rebuttal.
What triggers further survey in a PEA recommendation
Presence and absence surveys belong before determination. Mitigation detail can be conditioned. Knowing which is which decides whether ecology costs weeks or months.
Dormer design that survives a planning officer
Forty or fifty cubic metres is the permitted development allowance for a dormer. Building to the maximum is often what gets a scheme refused when it needs consent.
Petitions, template letters and individual objections
A petition registers a view; it does not raise a planning issue. How representations are weighed, and how to divide the ground between neighbours.
Ground gas protection and BS 8485 measures
Protection design follows the characteristic situation, and that follows the monitoring data. Too few rounds in settled weather is where schemes lose a season.
Courtyard blocks and sunlight to shared amenity space
At least half an amenity area should get two hours of sun on 21 March. Courtyards fail that for reasons fixed in the massing, not in the modelling.
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