PlanScope Blog – Page 71
Practical guides to UK planning applications: which reports your council expects, permitted development, constraints, costs and how to prepare each document.
Articles – page 71
9518 articlesWho signs a declaration on a prescribed planning form
The certificates on a planning form are separate statements with criminal consequences attached. An agent who ticks certificate A without enquiry is exposed under section 65(6).
Dropped kerb approval or permission for a front hardstanding
The crossover is licensed under the Highways Act 1980. The driveway behind it is permitted development only if it is porous or drains inside your boundary. Most people need both approvals.
Rights of light risk on an urban infill
Rights of light sit outside the planning system. The remedy is an injunction or damages based on development value, which makes this a project risk rather than a cost line.
Child yield: calculating play space requirements
Child yield turns a schedule of accommodation into an expected child population, then into square metres of playable space. Affordable family housing drives the number more than scheme size does.
Bird survey competence and recognised field methods
There is no licence to carry out a breeding bird survey, but disturbing a Schedule 1 species at the nest needs one, and it is personal to the surveyor.
Plant screens, enclosures and separation distances for substations
There is no single separation standard for a substation. Operator access rules, BS 4142 noise assessment and street frontage design all pull on the same position, and all three belong on the first layout.
Strategic Environmental Assessment or Sustainability Appraisal
A local plan appraisal discharges two duties at once: strategic environmental assessment under the 2004 Regulations and sustainability appraisal under section 19(5). Only one has sharp legal teeth.
Flood modelling where no published model exists
Published flood mapping covers main rivers in detail and ordinary watercourses barely at all. On those sites the choice is bespoke modelling or a defensibly conservative approach.
Trip rate: where transport numbers come from
Every vehicle number in a transport assessment traces back to a trip rate taken from surveys of comparable sites. The selection of those sites, not the arithmetic, is where disputes happen.
Who can carry out a parking survey to the recognised method
A parking stress survey stands or falls on method, not credentials. The overnight window, the walking catchment and the kerb measurement conventions are what authorities test.
Shoring and temporary works during demolition
Planning does not approve temporary works, but propping footprint, highway occupation and party wall stability all constrain the permanent scheme. Resolve them at design stage, not after permission.
Walkthrough: a boundary wall taken down in a conservation area
An illustrative walkthrough of a Victorian rubble boundary wall demolished without permission in a conservation area, the enforcement response and the specification that secured retrospective consent.
Environmental permit or planning permission for a waste use
The Environment Agency permits the operation. The waste planning authority decides whether the use belongs there. Both are needed, and a registered exemption is not a planning permission.
Electricity capacity enquiries and connection costs
Distance to the nearest cable is not what prices an electricity connection. The nominated point of connection and any reinforcement behind it are, and a free budget estimate tells you early.
Zone of theoretical visibility: setting a study area
A zone of theoretical visibility sets the study area for a landscape assessment. Because bare earth modelling ignores buildings and vegetation, it is a worst case rather than a finding.
Who can produce accurate visual representations
A verified view is a survey product as much as a rendering. The camera coordinate, the lens, the control points and the printed size are what make an image checkable by the other side.
Excavating a swimming pool in a garden
Class E of the GPDO covers a swimming pool in a domestic garden, but the enclosure, the plant room, twenty lorries of spoil and the backwash discharge are where schemes come unstuck.
Walkthrough: a shopfront reinstated on a listed building
An illustrative walkthrough of reinstating a historic shopfront on a Grade II listed building, from paint sections and archive photographs to advertisement consent and the accessibility compromise.
Felling licence or consent for works to a protected tree
A felling licence regulates timber volume under the Forestry Act 1967. Consent under a Tree Preservation Order protects amenity. Woodland can need both, and the exemptions do not carry across.
Budgeting a second ecological season after a lapse
Ecology data has a working shelf life of roughly one to three years. When a permission lapses or a licence expires, the difference between an update visit and a second full season decides the budget.
Veteran tree: what makes a tree irreplaceable
Veteran status is judged from decay features rather than age, and it brings a buffer far larger than a BS 5837 root protection area. Here is how the classification is made and what it does to a rural layout.
Rooftop plant and the capacity of an existing roof
An existing roof usually has very little spare capacity, and the reserve it appears to have is often in the slab rather than in the beams carrying it.
A mobile home on a garden plot: a walkthrough
The site licence exemption for a caravan in a garden is about licensing, not planning. Relying on it as a planning answer is the most common mistake in this area.
Class AA upward extension or a full application
Prior approval is attractive where the building fits the class cleanly, and a trap where it nearly fits. Squeezing inside the caps tends to produce flats that fail on natural light.
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