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Baby steps

Omnibuswoman

Entry posted by Omnibuswoman

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We have been increasingly anxious about the approaching deadline for the existing planning consent to expire - mid March 2021 - but today, at last, Dan our builder has made a start on the foundations for our workshop/garage/temporary site office and storage space. A large amount of hardcore arrived, the fencing around the protected oak trees was erected, and a digger and dumper arrived. 

Dan suggested making a start by scraping the mud off the driveway which was turning into a quagmire - an excellent idea. The hardcore is in place ready for levelling, and on Friday the concrete foundation slab will be cast. 

 

Plans are afoot for disposing of all of the topsoil that we had scraped off back in October. This is one of our planning conditions: to remove soil imbibed with arsenic compounds and replace with 'clean' topsoil. We have engaged a fantastic remediation company, Remediation UK, to do this. They sent us two brilliant guys to do the scraping, and piling it all up in an enormous 60 ton heap. Hopefully next week (council permit processing permitting) they will be back with an enormous skip to load up and take it all away to their disposal site down beyond Truro.

 

Of course, I am 250 miles away, locked down at home, and am only able to supervise via phone calls with Dan, and his photos (attached). But one thing I was able to do today was to meet with a company specialising in passive house engineering (Greengauge) to start talking about the PHPP spreadsheet and whether or not our window plans might cause overheating. We chose this company because they have made some really radical commitments as an organisation to only work on enerphit and passive house projects, and they are committed to climate crisis action. So far so good - second meeting in two weeks to review the results of their calculations... 

 

I'm now wondering when the right time is to dig a utilities trench. Anybody have any advice about that...?

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

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Soil bund being made.jpeg

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ProDave

Make sure you have notified the planners that you have started the development then your planning is locked in for good.

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Omnibuswoman

Thanks Dave. I will pop an email over to my friendly planning officer now!

Does notifying building control have any bearing on the planning consent deadline at all? I’ve had conflicting advice about that (from planning and building control depts). M

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Jilly

Just make sure both planning and BC acknowledge  in writing. If you are really worried as it's so tight, maybe consider discharging the relevant planning condition (ie call them and pay the £100 fee)? 

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jamieled
51 minutes ago, Omnibuswoman said:

Does notifying building control have any bearing on the planning consent deadline at all? I’ve had conflicting advice about that (from planning and building control depts). M

It may differ depending on the LA, but here they are separate functions,  so notifying one will not have any bearing on the other. I may be wrong in my recollection but I'm not sure I needed to notify BC i had started, only when it came to the first inspection stage (foundations).

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ToughButterCup

I would not even begin to be worried about it. (the 'start').

Take a photograph of the work , upload it to some photo-hosting service: that'll date stamp it.  When ( more likely if) anyone asks, point them to the documentary evidence. 

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