PlanScope Blog – Page 299
Practical guides to UK planning applications: which reports your council expects, permitted development, constraints, costs and how to prepare each document.
Articles – page 299
8989 articlesPart O overheating: simplified method or dynamic modelling
Approved Document O offers two routes. The simplified method is quick but rigid on glazing and free area, and noise or security constraints on opening windows usually push a scheme to dynamic modelling.
Ash dieback on development sites and what to do
Ash dieback changes retention categories, felling consents and the biodiversity baseline at once. Treating it as a straightforward safety matter is how developers lose units and gain enforcement risk.
Bat roost types and how each changes mitigation design
The roost type recorded on your site decides the mitigation. A day roost behind a hanging tile and a maternity roost in a warm loft void lead to very different drawings.
Tree roots, drains and boundary walls
Roots do not break sound pipework. They find an open joint and grow towards the leak, which is why the survey images decide who pays for the repair.
Swift bricks, bat boxes and conditioning integrated features
A nest brick at 2.4 metres above a lit kitchen window will never be occupied. What to specify, where to put it and how to evidence installation.
A micro-brewery taproom on an industrial estate
Brewing belongs on an industrial estate. The taproom is a separate use once it outgrows a tasting room, and customer noise at night is what decides it.
How a BREEAM rating is secured by planning condition
Two certification stages, a version-specific manual and mandatory minimum credits sit between a pre-assessment and a discharged condition. Where schemes come unstuck.
Using council diffusion tube data in an assessment
Measured tube data arrives with four adjustments applied or waiting. Which ones, how to check them, and how to verify a dispersion model against them.
Overhanging branches and the right of abatement
Cutting overhanging branches is a common law right, not a favour your neighbour grants. What the limits are, and why a protected tree reverses the advice.
Employment land assessment: evidencing need for new units
Four propositions decide an employment land case: demand exists, existing stock cannot meet it, allocations cannot either, and this site can.
Recreational disturbance zones, SANGs and mitigation payments
New homes bring dog walkers, and ground-nesting birds abandon nests. Why an ordinary scheme five kilometres from a heath needs land, a payment and an agreement.
A pet grooming salon or day care in a shop unit
Grooming and day care are different planning problems in the same unit. Where the line sits, how barking is assessed, and the conditions to expect.
Briefing a drafting tool with your site constraints
A document drafted from thin inputs looks finished and says nothing specific. What to establish first, and the six checks to run on any draft that comes back.
Whole life carbon: what modules A to D actually cover
Upfront, embodied and whole life carbon are three different totals built from the same modules. Which is which, and the assumptions that move the answer most.
When an Air Quality Management Area changes your application
An AQMA does not block development. It moves the burden of proof, and the harder question is usually what the air does to your residents, not the reverse.
Securing tree protection through conditions and bonds
A condition cannot lawfully require the payment of money, so a tree bond belongs in a section 106 and has to meet the statutory tests. What that means in practice.
Estate regeneration viability and existing resident costs
A residual appraisal template does not carry decant, leaseholder buyback or statutory compensation. Those cost heads are what estate schemes turn on.
Invasive species on site: knotweed, balsam and schedule 9
Having knotweed is not an offence. Spreading it is, and so is moving contaminated soil as ordinary muck-away. The survey, treatment and disposal duties explained.
Flood risk assessment for a change of use application
The walls stay where they are, but the people inside change. How vulnerability classification decides whether a conversion needs an assessment and an Exception Test.
A soft play centre in a large retail unit
The use class is rarely the obstacle. An old condition restricting the unit to retail, plus the sequential test for a main town centre use, usually is.
Why a drafted report cannot replace a bat survey
Software can draft the report around survey evidence. It cannot produce the evidence, and a permission granted without it can authorise a criminal offence.
What Part L 2021 changed for a planning energy statement
Emissions, primary energy and fabric efficiency all have targets now. What the 2021 uplift changed, and the double counting that officers look for first.
Odour from sewage treatment and the IAQM approach
A scheme next to a treatment works can be well designed and still fail. How the IAQM framework builds an effect descriptor, and why mitigation at the houses is weak.
Trees with bat roost potential on development sites
A sound, unprotected tree can still stop a scheme for four months because of a lifted bark flake. What roost potential means and how the assessment route works.
Not sure which documents your council will ask for?
Enter your postcode and PlanScope recommends the right reports for your project, then drafts them in minutes.
Enter your postcode on PlanScope