PlanScope Blog – Page 5
Practical guides to UK planning applications: which reports your council expects, permitted development, constraints, costs and how to prepare each document.
Articles – page 5
8382 articlesDoes paying for pre-application advice pay for itself
Pre-application advice pays when the answer could change the scheme. Where the policy position is already clear, the fee buys a letter restating what you knew.
EV charging in enclosed car parks and the fire case
Charging provision is required by building regulations and local policy. Enclosed parking makes a battery fire harder to fight. The layout has to solve both at planning stage.
Privacy distances between windows and the 21 metre convention
The 21 metre separation is a design guide figure, not law. How councils word it, how oblique angles and levels change it, and what to submit when it is not met.
Farm diversification: an illustrative glamping site application
Six safari tents on a mixed farm, and the three things that decided the application: the temporary use right, the drainage field and the lane. An illustrative walkthrough.
Objecting as a parish or town council: process and weight
A parish objection carries procedural weight but is not binding. What decides its effect is timing, planning reasons and whether it was properly resolved by the council.
What AI cannot do in a biodiversity net gain assessment
Habitat type and condition are observed on site by a competent person. That is why a drafted document can carry the narrative of a BNG assessment but never the baseline.
Planning performance agreements: what to put in one
A performance agreement buys predictability on a complex application, not a permission. The clauses that matter are dated milestones, named officers and a section 106 timetable.
Gateway Two and Three and what they mean for a programme
Gateway Two stops construction starting and Gateway Three stops occupation. Both sit outside planning, and both reshape the programme of a consented higher-risk scheme.
Garden overshadowing and the two hour sunlight test
At least half of a garden should receive two hours of sunlight on 21 March, with a proportional test where it already receives less. How councils apply both limbs.
The residual risk section of a flood risk assessment
Residual risk is what remains once the mitigation is built and working. Breach, overtopping, blockage, exceedance and mechanical failure each need naming, quantifying and managing.
Shop to dental practice within Class E: what needed permission
Moving from retail to a dental surgery stays inside Class E, so the use change needed no permission. The plant, shopfront and signage did. An illustrative walkthrough.
DAERA, environmental assessment and consents in Northern Ireland
DAERA advises councils on planning applications and separately licences discharges, abstraction and marine works. Here is how the two roles interact and how to sequence them.
Grid capacity and a rural renewable scheme
On a constrained network the connection offer tells you what scheme is worth applying for. Treating it as an engineering matter for after permission is how capacity gets wasted.
Loft conversion on a terrace with a party wall
Three consent regimes ran on different clocks, and the party wall award rather than the planning permission set the start date. An illustrative walkthrough.
A 12 unit scheme crossing the major development line
An illustrative walkthrough of a 12 dwelling scheme, showing what changes once the ten unit major threshold and the affordable housing policy threshold are crossed.
Five dwellings on a brownfield infill plot
Below ten units nothing is major, so the exercise is proportionality. This illustrative walkthrough shows which parts of the evidence base a five dwelling scheme actually needed.
Basement light wells, vaults and the public highway
Planning permission covers what shows. Sections 179 and 180 of the Highways Act 1980 cover the structure under the pavement, and neither answers who owns the ground.
Conditions requiring design changes for daylight
A condition can secure glazing, layout and window changes within the approved envelope. It cannot require a materially different development, which is where performance conditions fail.
Checking an AI draft against the validation checklist
The local list published under Article 11 is the document an application is actually validated against. Map every item to a file, and remember that no drafting tool produces drawings.
Why an adopted local plan still has to be read in full
Section 38(6) makes the development plan the starting point, which means the supporting text, the policies map and the allocation requirements all count, not just the policy wording.
Fire statement content: the matters Article 9A lists
The fire statement is a prescribed form, not a report you structure yourself. Here is what each matter needs at planning stage, and what belongs in the later strategy.
Fire safety strategy and fire statement: which one when
A fire statement shows fire safety has shaped the proposal while the layout can still change. A BS 9991 strategy shows how the building complies with Part B. They are not interchangeable.
Roof terraces and the overlooking objection
Part 1 rights apply to dwellinghouses, not flats, so a roof terrace on a flat is always a full application decided on overlooking, noise and appearance.
Dormers and daylight to the neighbour's rear elevation
The geometry of a roof addition means the daylight effect on a neighbour is usually small while the overlooking effect is not. The two need entirely different evidence.
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