PlanScope Blog – Page 308
Practical guides to UK planning applications: which reports your council expects, permitted development, constraints, costs and how to prepare each document.
Articles – page 308
8914 articlesWhat counts as curtilage for permitted development
Almost every householder permitted development right is expressed as something you may build within the curtilage of a dwellinghouse. Two neighbours with identical title plans can have different curtilages.
Sequential Test: agreeing the area of search
The area of search decides the outcome of a sequential test more often than the flood zone does. Define it from the development's function, and evidence every discount from the council's own list.
Using a conservation area appraisal as evidence
The council wrote the appraisal and adopted it, so an officer who disagrees with your reading of it has to explain why their own document is wrong. Here is how to use it properly.
Deer fencing, game rearing and shooting infrastructure
The permitted development right for fences stops at 2 metres, which is below a working deer fence. Game rearing buildings usually fall outside agricultural permitted development altogether.
Reports needed for a veterinary practice change of use
The Use Classes Order does not name veterinary practices, so the first question is whether you need permission at all. After that it is noise, waste, ventilation and parking that decide the application.
Section 278 agreement: works to the public highway
Planning permission gives you no right to dig up the road. A section 278 agreement under the Highways Act 1980 does, and it carries its own design approval, bond and fee regime.
Reading a Tree Preservation Order schedule and map
Finding out that an order covers your garden is easy. Working out which trees it protects depends on whether they are listed individually, in a group, in an area or as woodland.
Reports needed for a caravan and camping site
Planning permission decides whether a campsite belongs in that location. The site licence decides how it is laid out, and a layout drawn without the model standards has to be redrawn.
Certificates of ownership A to D: getting them right
Most applicants sign Certificate A without checking the title. A shared driveway, an estate road or a strip of verge puts you in Certificate B, and the notice has to be served before you apply.
Community Infrastructure Levy exemptions and how to claim
Self-builders rarely lose the levy exemption on the merits. They lose it by starting work before the decision arrives or by missing the commencement notice.
Conditions and limitations that defeat permitted development
A condition imposed on a permission years ago can withdraw permitted development rights across a whole estate. Nobody has to tell a purchaser, so the check belongs in the first hour of the job.
Flood warning and evacuation plans: what councils expect
The flood risk assessment sets the levels. The evacuation plan answers what the occupants do when the water arrives, and it is judged on lead times rather than modelling.
Assessing Green Belt openness in a planning application
Openness is a policy concept with spatial and visual dimensions. The measurements rarely decide an application, but the reasoning drawn from them does.
Muck spreading, nuisance complaints and planning conditions
Planning control does not extend to spreading on agricultural land. The rules that bite are statutory nuisance, the farming rules for water, and conditions on a consented digester or livestock unit.
Reports needed for a padel court development
Ball impacts on glass walls and four voices per court make padel noise impulsive and human. That drives the layout, the hours and the mitigation long before anything else in the pack.
Irreplaceable habitat: what the term covers in planning
Where a site holds irreplaceable habitat the biodiversity metric does not save the scheme. The policy test is close to a prohibition, so the work is avoidance and buffering.
Hedgerow removal and the Hedgerows Regulations 1997
The Hedgerows Regulations 1997 run on a 42 day notice procedure. Removing an important hedgerow without following it is a criminal offence, and replacement planting can be required.
New flats above shops under Part 20 permitted development
Part 20 allows up to two extra storeys of flats over a commercial building, but the date window, the terrace height rule and the ground floor entrance defeat more schemes than the policy does.
Permeable paving on clay: designing for zero infiltration
Tanked permeable paving keeps the interception and treatment benefits and replaces infiltration with a controlled discharge. The sub-base depth and the outfall invert drive the design.
SANGs and recreational disturbance around heathland
Housing within the zone of influence of a heathland Special Protection Area needs Suitable Alternative Natural Greenspace plus a monitoring contribution, both secured before permission.
Farm workers' caravans and the site licence exemptions
Schedule 1 to the 1960 Act exempts caravans housing workers employed in farming operations on the land. Part 5 of the GPDO grants planning permission in the same circumstances, and both fall away together.
Reports needed for a crematorium application
The 1902 Act standoffs decide whether a crematorium site works at all. After that, the evidence base turns on abatement plant, the booked service traffic pattern and the memorial grounds.
Functional floodplain: what Flood Zone 3b actually means
The functional floodplain is land where water has to flow or be stored. It is defined locally in a strategic flood risk assessment, which is why the national map never shows it.
Rights of way on development sites and section 257 orders
Planning permission does not authorise obstructing a public right of way. The diversion order runs on its own track, with its own objection period, and it can add months to a programme.
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