PlanScope Blog – Page 339
Practical guides to UK planning applications: which reports your council expects, permitted development, constraints, costs and how to prepare each document.
Articles – page 339
8447 articlesCouncil monitoring fees on section 106 agreements
Monitoring fees and legal costs are the part of a section 106 nobody budgets for and everybody pays. Both are negotiable, and both have a test they have to meet.
Tree protection plans and the fencing specification
A tree protection plan is a site instruction disguised as a drawing. The fence line, the barrier specification and the retention period are the three things a tree officer checks on site.
Travel Plan targets, monitoring and the section 106 clause
A Travel Plan is only as good as the obligation that secures it. Targets, survey method, monitoring intervals and remedies all belong in the agreement rather than in the document.
Which reports for flats above shops in a mixed-use scheme
Stacking homes over commercial space creates an evidence requirement that neither use would generate alone. Agent of change is where most of these applications are won or lost.
Self-build on a garden plot: permission to subdivide
Subdividing a garden for one self-build house is a minor application with a hard planning test. The argument is almost always about plot pattern, access and what is left behind for the original house.
Circular Economy Statement and the pre-redevelopment audit
A Circular Economy Statement without a pre-redevelopment audit behind it is a set of intentions. The audit is what turns reuse targets into a schedule of actual material on an actual site.
Sequential approach on a single site explained
The sequential test compares sites. The sequential approach works inside the red line of the one you have. Confusing the two is the fastest way to lose an Environment Agency consultation response.
Local plan examination: what a soundness objection needs
A representation that says a local plan is unsound but does not say what change would make it sound gives the inspector nothing to work with. The Regulation 19 window is the moment to fix that.
Root protection areas: calculating and drawing the RPA
The root protection area is a stem diameter multiplied by twelve, turned into a circle, capped at 707 square metres. What happens after that calculation is where most schemes get into difficulty.
Swept path analysis: what the highway officer checks
A swept path drawing is checked for three things: whether the design vehicle is the right one, whether the envelope clears everything solid, and whether the manoeuvre is one a driver would actually make.
Which reports for backland development of two houses
Backland schemes are refused on access and overlooking far more often than on design. The document pack for two houses behind an existing frontage should be built around those two arguments.
Office to residential conversion under Class MA
Class MA lets a building in Class E use become homes through prior approval rather than a full application. The route is narrower than it looks, and the conditions on the building matter as much as the design.
Overheating Risk Assessment: TM59 inputs and outputs
A TM59 assessment models every habitable room against two temperature criteria using fixed occupancy profiles and a chosen weather file. The assumptions decide the result more often than the fabric does.
Climate change allowance in a flood risk assessment
A climate change allowance is the uplift applied to modelled flood levels so a development is tested against the conditions expected over its lifetime, not today's. Getting the band and the lifetime right is most of the work.
Article 4 direction compensation and the 12-month notice rule
Councils give a year's notice before an Article 4 direction takes effect because doing so removes their compensation liability under section 108. Here is how the notice, confirmation and objection process actually runs.
Council affordable housing policy: thresholds and sums
Above the major development threshold, local policy sets the percentage, the tenure and the mechanism. How each part works and what evidence supports a departure.
Refuse vehicle tracking and bin collection points
The waste collection authority sets carry distances, the highway authority sets turning provision. How to design a layout that satisfies both and prove it on the drawing.
Which reports for demolition and rebuild of one house
Demolishing and rebuilding a dwelling brings rules an extension never touches, including biodiversity net gain. The documents to assemble and the order to do it in.
Class MA: office to home prior approval explained
Class MA converts Class E buildings to homes through prior approval. The qualifying tests, the evidence councils check, and the natural light matter that defeats deep plans.
Council viability evidence: what officers publish and redact
Write the appraisal expecting publication. What can be redacted, how benchmark land value is set, and what an independent reviewer will test line by line.
Cycle parking standards and the design that satisfies them
Meeting the number is a validation issue, designing a store people will use is a refusal issue. Stand spacing, access routes and non-standard cycle provision.
Which reports for a gym in a Class E industrial unit
A gym in an industrial unit turns on structure-borne noise and employment land policy. What the assessment must cover and why marketing evidence is usually the missing item.
Section 96A: what counts as a non-material amendment
There is no statutory definition of non-material, so the choice between section 96A, section 73 and a fresh application is a judgement. How to make it correctly.
Council tree officer comments and the pre-application check
Tree objections arrive in week five and are caused by decisions taken months earlier. What the tree officer looks for and how to design around root protection areas.
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