PlanScope Blog – Page 317
Practical guides to UK planning applications: which reports your council expects, permitted development, constraints, costs and how to prepare each document.
Articles – page 317
8840 articlesPart 6 Class B: agricultural units under five hectares
On a holding between 0.4 and 5 hectares, permitted development covers extensions, plant, private ways and hard surfaces. It does not cover a new building.
When a council can reject a report because of its author
Author competence is sometimes a validation point, sometimes a legal requirement and sometimes only a question of weight. Telling them apart decides whether you argue or recommission.
Amenity standards for bedrooms in shared and co-living
A shared bedroom is judged twice against standards that do not match: the licensing minimum floor areas and the planning tests on daylight, outlook and ventilation.
Biodiversity net gain or habitats regulations assessment
One regime measures habitat units and asks for 10 per cent more. The other asks whether a designated site would be harmed, and refuses permission if doubt remains. They are not interchangeable.
Side extensions and the half the width test
Class A allows a side extension only if it is single storey, within 4 metres in height and no wider than half the original house. The half width test is the one that catches people.
Reports needed for a fifty unit residential scheme
Fifty units is where transport evidence steps up, community involvement becomes an expectation, and open space and play space calculations start to take plots out of the layout.
Baseline monitoring in an Air Quality Assessment
The baseline decides whether every modelled concentration that follows is right. Background maps, diffusion tubes, bias adjustment, annualisation and where receptors belong.
Nutrient neutrality and the Habitats Regulations assessment
In affected catchments the Habitats Regulations stop permission unless the council can rule out harm beyond reasonable scientific doubt. The budget, the mitigation and the programme consequences.
Mixed use and the planning unit: getting the description right
A composite mixed use falls outside every use class, which makes the description of development the only definition of what is permitted. Here is how to identify the unit and draft the wording.
Part 6 Class A: agricultural buildings on larger units
Class A of Part 6 allows agricultural buildings on holdings of 5 hectares or more, within a 1,000 square metre ground area limit and a 12 metre height cap, after a prior approval notification.
Reading a consultant fee proposal: scope and exclusions
The price is the least useful part of a fee proposal. Read the scope, exclusions and assumptions first, and three quotes that looked similar will stop looking similar.
Boundary walls, fences and light to a ground floor window
Part 2 Class A allows 2 metres at the rear and 1 metre next to a highway. Here is how to test light loss from a low obstruction, and what to do when the fence is lawful.
Article 4 direction or a condition removing PD rights
Both close the permitted development route, but only one is mapped, consulted on and capable of attracting compensation. The differences decide which search picks it up before you buy.
Rear dormers and the 40 and 50 cubic metre allowances
Class B gives a terrace house 40 cubic metres of roof addition and other houses 50, measured against the original roof. The eaves set back, side glazing and article 2(3) land catch more dormers than the volume figure.
Reports needed once a scheme reaches ten units
Ten dwellings makes a scheme major development. Affordable housing evidence, a statutory drainage consultee, biodiversity net gain under the major regime and a thirteen week clock all arrive at once.
Root protection areas in an Arboricultural Impact Assessment
The root protection area is 12 times the stem diameter, capped at 707 square metres. Here is how to calculate it, when it can be reshaped, and how far an incursion can be defended.
Reports needed for a nine unit scheme just under major
Nine units sits one unit below major development, which changes the determination period, the consultee list and the affordable housing position. What the pack actually needs.
Vacant building credit: when it applies and how to prove it
The credit subtracts the floorspace of relevant vacant buildings before the affordable housing policy is applied. The conditions, the abandonment test and the evidence councils accept.
Class Q barn conversion: the tests that decide it
Four questions decide a Class Q prior approval, and all four can be answered before you spend money: qualifying agricultural use, structural suitability, the floorspace limits and the designations.
Part 2 Class B: forming an access to a highway
Class B of Part 2 is a supporting right, not a standalone one. The road must be unclassified and the access must serve development permitted elsewhere in the Order.
Peer review and sign-off: what a reviewer takes on
Reviewing a draft and signing it are different acts with different exposure. How to write a scope statement, price the liability rather than the hours, and know when to decline.
Validating a daylight model before you rely on it
Errors in daylight assessments live in the inputs rather than the software. A reviewer's order of work: geometry provenance first, surface assumptions second, hand checks last.
Party wall notice or planning permission
A planning permission does not let you cut into a shared wall or dig beside a neighbour's foundations. What the Party Wall etc. Act 1996 requires, and how its timetable fits around an application.
The trading rules in a Biodiversity Net Gain Assessment
The trading rules stop a developer replacing something scarce with a lot of something common. How distinctiveness bands, module separation and the risk multipliers shape what a site can deliver.
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