PlanScope Blog – Page 39
Practical guides to UK planning applications: which reports your council expects, permitted development, constraints, costs and how to prepare each document.
Articles – page 39
9577 articlesMinerals safeguarding areas and the sterilisation test
Safeguarding areas protect resources that can only be worked where they occur. The objection is about sterilisation, and the answer has four evidenced parts.
Part 5: caravan sites and certificated recreational sites
Part 5 permitted development for caravan sites tracks the licensing exemptions in Schedule 1 to the 1960 Act exactly. Outside those cases it gives you nothing.
Net or gross: counting units where homes are demolished
Demolish four flats and build twelve houses and you have a major application on gross numbers with a net gain of eight. Each test counts differently.
Fee exemptions for works to help a disabled person
The fee regulations exempt applications made solely for disabled access or facilities, at a home or a public building. The word that decides most cases is solely.
Reports for seasonal agricultural worker caravans
Seasonal worker caravans need planning permission and a caravan site licence, and the two ask different questions. Here is the evidence pack that satisfies both.
Drawing conventions that cause validation queries
Most validation queries are about scale bars, north points, drawing numbers and red lines rather than planning merits. The conventions that get an application validated first time.
The tenth dwelling: crossing into major development
Ten dwellings is the major development threshold. What the tenth unit changes in procedure, policy and cost, and when nine is the better scheme.
Conditions requiring details before work starts
Start work before a pre start condition is discharged and the works are unlawful, and the permission may never have been implemented. How to spot, reorder and discharge them.
Timber frame construction and fire risk during build
The risk sits in the weeks between erecting the frame and completing the linings. How separation, phasing and access controls end up in a construction management plan.
Rights of light surveys alongside a planning application
A planning permission is no defence to a rights of light claim. How the legal test differs from the planning benchmarks, and why the analysis belongs at feasibility stage.
Flood resilient construction specification for ground floors
Resistance keeps water out, resilience lets the building dry. The floor, wall, insulation and service decisions that let a ground floor be reinstated rather than rebuilt.
Dormer windows under Class B: the volume allowance
Forty cubic metres for a terrace, fifty for anything else, measured against the original roof and reduced by every earlier enlargement. How the Class B allowance really works.
Non-material amendments: procedure and timescale
Twenty-eight days, a small fee and no new permission. Where a section 96A amendment works, where it does not, and how it differs from a section 73 variation.
Supervising junior staff who start from a drafted report
Structural completeness is now free, evidential completeness is not. How to supervise junior planners working from AI-assisted drafts without losing the audit trail.
Employment land supply and resisting a loss of allocation
Releasing allocated employment land turns on whether a reasonable prospect of employment use remains. The marketing exercise, the viability comparison and the supply analysis.
Coal mining legacy and stability evidence
Shallow workings, unrecorded shafts and mine gas all surface at planning stage on coalfield sites. What the risk assessment should specify and what the conditions will require.
Daylight in a converted office under Class MA
Class MA prior approval can be refused on natural light alone, and the test covers every habitable room. How adequate light is assessed and how deep office floorplates fail it.
Pumped surface water discharge and the pump failure case
Pumping surface water is a last resort, and the design has to answer what happens when the pump stops. Duty and standby provision, outage storage and residual risk.
Veteran and ancient trees: the criteria that separate them
Ancient and veteran trees are irreplaceable habitat, which changes the policy test entirely. The features that identify them, the girth question and the buffer they need.
Permitted development breaches and the immunity period
Miss one limit in a permitted development class and the whole development is unauthorised. How the enforcement time limits now work in England, and what evidence proves immunity.
Re-determining an application after a decision is quashed
A quashing order removes the decision and nothing else. The application returns for a fresh decision against whatever policy and evidence apply on the day it is redetermined.
Why a draft cannot run a flood sequential test
AI-assisted drafting can give you the policy framework and the schedule layout for a flood sequential test. The site search, the agreed area of search and the availability evidence remain yours.
The retail sequential test: building an area of search
The area of search decides whether a retail sequential test survives scrutiny. How to set the boundary, apply flexibility on format and scale, and schedule the sites.
Fire safety in HMO conversions at planning stage
Planning decides the use, Building Regulations decide escape, and licensing decides room sizes. How the fire requirements reshape an HMO layout before the application is ever submitted.
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