PlanScope Blog – Page 297
Practical guides to UK planning applications: which reports your council expects, permitted development, constraints, costs and how to prepare each document.
Articles – page 297
9007 articlesCommercial kitchen ducts through residential buildings
A unit with no viable duct route cannot be fitted out as a restaurant. Here is how to settle the route, the termination and the consents before signing a lease.
Trees, solar panels and shading disputes
There is no right to sunlight for a solar array. Here is how the amenity balance works, what evidence persuades, and which design alternatives usually beat felling.
Conditions or a section 106 agreement: where the line falls
A condition cannot require money, bind third-party land or run with the title. Those limits decide most cases before convenience enters the discussion.
Checking whether an Article 4 direction applies to a property
A map layer is not enough. The direction document decides which rights have gone, and the confirmation date decides whether they had gone when you acted.
Keeping an audit trail for an assisted submission
A challenge to a statement you wrote a year ago is answered from the file, not from memory. Here is the record a practice needs and the minimum version of it.
Social housing relief from the levy and its clawback
Mandatory relief for qualifying affordable dwellings cannot be refused, but it must be claimed before work starts and it is apportioned by floor area rather than by unit numbers.
Sprinklers and suppression: what planning can require
Approved Document B decides where sprinklers are needed. This sets out the narrow cases where a planning condition survives the six tests, and the space and water issues behind them.
Wind microclimate: the Lawson comfort criteria explained
Comfort categories drawn from the Beaufort scale decide whether a terrace works as a terrace. Here is how the bands, the safety threshold and the results plans fit together.
What an energy statement for a single new dwelling needs
For one new dwelling the energy document should run to a few pages. Here is how to check whether it is required and what to put in it.
Railway vibration and what BS 6472 requires
Vibration from trains is assessed with vibration dose values, not decibels, and groundborne rumble needs separate treatment. Here is how to survey, predict and mitigate it.
Biosecurity and plant passports for nursery stock
Plant passports record traceability rather than plant health. Here is how to specify growing history, provenance and quarantine so a 30-year planting obligation survives.
Searching the National Heritage List for a listed building
The List tells you that a building is designated and at what grade. It does not tell you which parts are protected, and that gap causes most unauthorised works on listed sites.
CIL liability thresholds and the exemptions
Development under 100 square metres escapes the Community Infrastructure Levy unless it creates a dwelling. Here is how liability is calculated, offset and relieved.
Competent person rules and biodiversity net gain drafts
The statutory biodiversity metric depends on field condition assessment by a competent person. This sets out what a drafted gain plan can cover and what only an ecologist can complete.
CIL self-build exemption: the forms and the deadlines
Self-build relief from the Community Infrastructure Levy is lost on paperwork more often than on eligibility. Here is the sequence, the six-month evidence deadline and the clawback rules.
External wall materials and combustibility at planning
Planning controls appearance while Building Regulations decide what can be built. This is how to specify external wall materials on a tall residential scheme without creating a conflict.
Cumulative daylight assessment with consented schemes
Boroughs with several towers in the pipeline ask for daylight results with neighbouring consents built. Here is how to select the schemes, fix a cut-off date and present the scenarios.
Heat network connection requirements in local plan policy
Connection, connection-ready or a feasibility case: which one applies decides plant space, riser strategy and flow temperatures, so settle it before the layout is fixed.
Assessing noise from a nursery or school playground
Children playing sit outside the scope of BS 4142. This is the method environmental health officers accept for nursery and school outdoor play, and the conditions that follow.
Counting trees in an urban greening factor score
Trees earn their greening factor score through projected canopy area, but the factor applied depends on the soil volume you give them. Here is how the calculation works and where it goes wrong.
Finding designated sites on MAGIC before you design
A practical run through the MAGIC layers that decide a planning report schedule, what the impact risk zones trigger, and how far to trust the priority habitat inventory.
EIA screening thresholds for residential schemes
Residential schemes are screened, not automatically assessed. Here is how the Schedule 2 thresholds, sensitive areas and cumulative effects decide whether an Environmental Statement is needed.
Using the Flood Map for Planning to establish a flood zone
The flood map gives you a zone and a dated extract. Here is how to read it, what it leaves out, and how to request the modelled data an assessment is actually built on.
The one hectare flood risk assessment threshold
Flood Zone 1 does not mean no assessment. Here is why the one hectare area test exists, which other triggers apply, and what a drainage-led assessment must contain.
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