PlanScope Blog – Page 94
Practical guides to UK planning applications: which reports your council expects, permitted development, constraints, costs and how to prepare each document.
Articles – page 94
9477 articlesMaintenance plans for drainage: content and author
Most drainage maintenance plans describe inspection frequencies well and then fail on the question of who is actually obliged to carry them out, and how it is funded.
Article 4 directions that remove householder rights
A direction moves the decision from the permitted development order to the council. No application fee is payable, but the design evidence expected goes up.
Flood hazard rating and what the numbers mean
Flood zones say how likely flooding is. The hazard rating says what the water would do to someone walking out through it, which is why access routes are judged on it.
Fire engineering a building with a single access road
One route in means the fire service will ask what happens when it is blocked. Appliance dimensions, secondary access options and compensating measures in the building.
SuDS features and double counting against net gain
A basin can attenuate water and carry habitat. What it cannot do is appear twice in the metric, or be credited with a condition the maintenance regime makes impossible.
Village design statements and their planning weight
The same design statement counts for a great deal inside a made neighbourhood plan and very little if the parish council simply printed it. Adoption route decides weight.
Source protection zone 1 and what it restricts
The inner source protection zone is a 50 day travel time to a drinking water abstraction. Inside it, infiltration drainage and several below-ground activities are resisted.
Substructure and basements in whole life carbon
Piles, retaining walls, slabs and spoil haulage are concrete, steel and diesel. Leave them out and a basement scheme looks identical to one without a basement.
Defending a low car driver trip rate
Parking provision is the controlling variable behind any low car driver trip rate. Site selection, accessibility evidence and a sensitivity test are what make it defensible.
Archaeology in a historic town centre basement scheme
On a deep urban site the pile layout and basement depth are archaeological decisions as much as structural ones. Deposit modelling comes before foundation design.
Daylight to care home and hospital rooms nearby
In a care home a bedroom may be occupied twenty hours a day, which inverts the usual room hierarchy in a daylight assessment. The tests stay the same; the weighting does not.
Removing internal walls in a listed building
Listing covers the inside of a building, and plan form is often the part that matters most. The structural case and the heritage case have to agree with each other.
Highway drainage connections and the authority's rules
A highway drain is sized for the road and sits nowhere in the drainage hierarchy. Connecting to it needs the highway authority's consent, and the default answer is no.
When a council insists on a named professional author
A council can require a competent author. It cannot invent the requirement at the validation desk, and local list items must be published, proportionate and current.
Strategic view corridors and the assessment method
A view corridor is geometry you either breach or clear. The wider setting and background areas are judgement, and that is where most refusals on view grounds come from.
Veteran trees and their buffer zones
A veteran tree carries unusual value through its age, size or condition. Policy treats it as irreplaceable habitat, and the buffer is usually larger than a standard root protection area.
Carbon factors in SAP and what electrification changed
The grid electricity factor in SAP fell by about three quarters between SAP 2012 and SAP 10 while gas barely moved. Every carbon claim in an energy statement depends on which set was used.
Parking stress surveys and the beat survey method
Parking stress is parked vehicles divided by usable kerb capacity. The measurement of usable kerb, not the counting, is where most surveys are successfully challenged.
Heritage at Risk: what it means for your application
A register entry gives the authority a published interest in repair and reuse. It is also evidence the condition was known, which cuts both ways for a purchaser.
Daylight to a school classroom beside a new building
Classrooms are sensitive receptors: deep rooms, single sided glazing and fixed occupancy hours. The BRE tests still apply, but the weight, the timing and the consultation all change.
Temporary works and the planning permission boundary
Planning permission authorises the development, not the scaffold over the footway or the crane jib over a neighbour's roof. Those come from the Highways Act and private agreements.
Pumping stations: standards, odour and adoption
A foul pumping station needs land, access, a separation distance from habitable rooms and an adoption agreement. Settle all four at layout stage, not after.
What chartered status means across planning disciplines
Chartered status means an institute has tested competence and holds the member to a code. On a few planning reports a qualification is a legal requirement; on most it is an expectation.
Drinking water safeguard zones and land use
Safeguard zones are catchment designations made where raw water quality is deteriorating. They change the drainage, slurry and contamination evidence a rural application needs.
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