PlanScope Blog – Page 72
Practical guides to UK planning applications: which reports your council expects, permitted development, constraints, costs and how to prepare each document.
Articles – page 72
9517 articlesCharacteristic situation: classifying ground gas risk
Ground gas behaviour is driven by pressure, so a single dry day reading proves very little. The classification combines the worst concentration with the worst flow rate.
Building beside railway infrastructure: asset protection
The council decides the application. The infrastructure manager decides whether your piling rig, your crane and your drainage are acceptable next to a live railway.
An air conditioning unit and a neighbour complaint
A unit can be lawful in planning terms and still be abated as a statutory nuisance, and it can need permission while making almost no noise at all.
Archaeological post-excavation and archive costs
An excavation produces a hole, a set of records and a quantity of material. The records and the material are liabilities until they have been analysed, published and deposited.
Asking the council to make an Article 4 direction
Councils move slowly on Article 4 because of compensation liability. A request that acknowledges it, and asks for a twelve month deferred start, gets a better hearing.
Writing a consultant brief you can hold someone to
Asked to assess noise, a careful acoustician prices a full survey and an aggressive one prices a desk review. Both are honest answers to the same words, and neither is comparable.
Transfer structures over a commercial ground floor
The transfer zone sits between the commercial ceiling and the first residential floor, and it is additive. Developers usually discover that after the massing is fixed.
A holiday let refused on a C3 dwelling: a walkthrough
Nothing physical changed. No extension, no new door, no sign. The entire case turned on the pattern of occupation and the listing's own dated review history.
How a Grampian condition affects finance drawdown
The cost is almost never the off-site works themselves. It is the carry between holding a permission and holding one you can lawfully implement.
Objecting to a change of use that needs no permission
Moving between two uses in the same class is not development, so no application exists. The remedies people reach for apply to permitted development rights, which is a different thing.
Peer review of a technical report: scope and value
A reviewer can tell you whether the method followed the standard. A reviewer cannot tell you whether the sound meter was calibrated or whether the survey happened at all.
Modular construction: what the planning submission must fix
A modular system stacks a ceiling cassette on a floor cassette at every junction. Over six storeys that extra floor zone can take a scheme over a height limit expressed in metres.
A scheme that failed on biodiversity net gain
A net gain failure rarely happens at application stage. It happens when the biodiversity gain plan goes in for approval, the authority says no, and the site cannot lawfully start.
Ownership certificate A or B on a planning application
Owner means the freeholder and any lessee with at least seven years left to run. A monthly tenant is not an owner. A tenant with twelve years remaining is.
Licences to occupy the highway during construction
Highway occupation charges accrue whether or not work is happening, and they sit outside the planning fee and the building control charge. On an urban site they run for the whole programme.
Petitions and template objections: how officers treat them
Public opposition is not itself a material consideration. The matters the opposition is about, if they are planning matters, are. That distinction decides whether a campaign changes anything.
Whole life carbon assessment: who is competent to do it
There is no register and no protected title for whole life carbon assessment. What exists is a professional standard, a London reporting template that exposes weak work, and a handful of judgement calls that go wrong predictably.
Flood resilient construction and its structural effects
Standing water is heavy, it pushes sideways and it lifts. A wall detailed to exclude a metre of water carries loads an ordinary cavity wall was never designed for.
Commuted sums for open space maintenance explained
Councils price open space maintenance as area by annual rate by commutation period, then ask for it as a lump sum in the section 106 agreement. Here is how the figure is built and how the drafting changes what you pay.
Temporary use of a vacant unit for a pop up
The 28 day right in Part 4 Class B applies to land, not to buildings or land within a building's curtilage. That single limitation defeats most high street pop ups.
A veterinary practice with overnight care: a walkthrough
The building use was already acceptable. The 24 hour operation, with barking at 3am and a condenser running against a party boundary, is what the application had to justify.
Foul Sewage Assessment or Utilities Assessment
Foul drainage is a question on the application form, so a weak answer delays validation. Utilities capacity bites later, when the network operator quotes for a reinforcement nobody budgeted for.
Land contamination Phase 1 or Phase 2 investigation
The difference is not depth of detail. It is whether anyone put a hole in the ground, and the two reports answer different questions at different points.
Budgeting a public exhibition for a major scheme
An exhibition that produces a photograph of a full room and no analysis has spent money without buying anything. The budget should follow what the statement has to prove.
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