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Update: Received the following just now- “Please accept our apologies in regards to not informing you when we issued the CIL Liability notice out at that time, as the originally email with the notices was sent out to your agent directly dated 04/10/2023 (attached). Due to the situation where development has commenced on site and you didn’t get notified, on this occasion we will allow discretion whereby you can submit the relevant forms, and we will grant the relief. Please do note that the full CIL charge plus the additional surcharges will not be imposed.” Thank goodness! These last 24 hours have been traumatic to say the least. But it appears that they do have some heart following my email to them detailing all the flaws in their process conducted. Thank you all for your input and advice. What an amazing platform we have here 😀

Most British people don't want more houses really. Other than for themselves of course.

@Berkshire_selfbuid if you were willing to share a little more publicly, please consider dropping some of the self-build magazines / the NSBRC, pitched as a ‘near miss’ type of event. I guarantee at least one person would benefit from it. Magazines: Build it Homebuilding & Renovating Design Buy Build NSBRC - not sure if they have a publication / advisory information resource.

Have a large one and enjoy it . Fair play for posting this issue on the forum, it will serve as a reminder for those who follow as to the seriousness of CIL and how much of a financial benefit it is to us self builders ( if we reminder to fill out the forms 😀)

Ha. Already received and can see the £0.00 CIL due. I have set a reminder in my phone in the future to go off every 2 weeks to do CIL form 7 Part 2 within 6 months of completion. There’s no way I’m letting that slide!!!

Excellent news. Don’t put your faith in any other professional. Check them and check them again. Oh, and what ever you do, don’t forget the final CIL form when you’re finished 😱

Planners also call you up telling you it will be refused , but ; if you pull the application now it won’t then get listed as refused . Why ? . Because the planning department get penalties for rejecting too many applications. This way their ‘pass’ rate looks really high ….

One useful thing to do would be to ask the architects for a formal letter to you or (even better) a witness statement saying what they received from the LPA and when (re CIL) and what they communicated to you re CIl and when. Also ask the LPA for similar for their communications re CIL, this time as a witness statement. Also prepare a witness statement for yourself re comms with architect & LPA while it’s fresh in your memory. This s.b. purely factual and as detailed as possible and contain copies of the written comms or your detailed description of any verbal comms. This step should focus everyone’s attention. Also ask both parties for the contact details of their lawyers. Don’t offer yours up yet though.

Maybe it's not exactly what you had pictured in your minds eye but I would try to keep a balanced view. The house I grew up in house has manmade slates since 1951 and they're still up there, day in day out keeping the weather at bay. They have gone somewhat grey and are more brittle than new but they've never leaked. A similar aged house in the locality had theirs painted recently with specialist paint to smarten them up and reinforce them somewhat. Natural slate isn't without it's issues either. Some of the imported stuff can be of extremely variable quality resulting in lots of waste and high fitting bills. Welsh slate is very very expensive. It's far heavier and will stress the roof timbers more. We put fiber cement on our roof, even paid a little extra for the fancier type. Complete waste of money. Nobody ever noticed. I don't think anyone will spend too much time looking at yours if I'm honest. The builder is running a business and will naturally tender to the most competitive specification. I don't think you can really blame them. Just make sure the price tag reflects what you have and spend the savings on something more important like a comfy chair or a boiling water tap.

This is why this forum is such a great asset. Thinking about this you could argue YOU were not Emailed and you have no control over the architects.

100% . Dead long time . Alive short time . If you can afford it and want it - do it . You can then regret it later 😉

Managed to sort, I did when I was a bit calmer and it fitted easily, thanks for all the help and Merry Xmas to you all.

“The only thing coming to my mind over and over is letting down my wife and my 2 young children. These costs, and potentially not having a home at the end, is soul crushing.” I bet it is. As if self build wasn’t stressful enough for us novices.

>>> Is it so fundamentally broken I think it is - the LPAs have way too much power. In particular they can delay for ever and most planning judgement is just personal opinion - which varies with the case officer, the day of the week, the weather etc. The rules need to be slashed by 50% or more for self or small housebuilders. And both the LPAs and the Inspectorate mislead the governement and the public with the way they mis-report their stats. An architect friend tells me that if the French equivalent of an LPA doesn't make up its mind by the state-imposed deadline, then the application is automatically allowed. Here, delay is routinely used as an LPA negotiating tool.

We are into December So able to make a comparison between our current and previous build All things considered I think the HP will be the same or slightly more to run We didn’t have an option on this build Both builds are traditional Scoring about the same B89 A if we ever got the urge to add PV Which our buyers are in the process of doing While the HP works exactly the same with UFH I wouldn’t like to have to rely on Rads with a HP They are slow to heat and don’t get very hot I wouldn’t like to have to rely on Rads to heat a poorly insulated home The installer came back to check and set everything up for winter He asked if we could leave the Rads on for a few hours All in all we are pleasantly surprised at how straightforward a HP is and hot water on tap 24-7 is a bonus

In the end I decided to do just that. Fingers crossed it will be ok.

You may get a blank look from the window people, they are generally clueless. Do a Google search on here and you will find a few people using different ones. We have MVHR it has humidity sensing and boosts as needed. No idea when it last boosted, fairly steady temps and continuously running ventilation is key. Once the house settles down the background ventilation is mostly all that's needed. No really correct they are always partly open so room always gets some ventilation. No, size is irrelevant really it's the usage, it's there for background ventilation. You will have your cooker hood as well.

I made a poor quality video trying to explain this.

Drained ventilated cavity, much loved by warranty providers. Other than that, none I can think of. No, up to 80. Many over 100. You would need to price it up. I have not found brickwork to be expensive v. cladding. I imagine there are a number of wall tie options, either embedded pre-pour or post installed. This would be one for your engineer. Not really. Fibre cement and ali have coatings that deteriorate.

So pleased for you, it must have been such a worry while you were trying to sort out. Fair play to the CIL department as well, the stuff that I read on here seems to indicate that they are a fairly unforgiving bunce.

Ah well done OP, what a horror story of a read! I am so relieved and pleased for you!!!

Less than half the volume of the house an hour, all very slow. I would really consider dMEV. Greenwood CV3 or CV2, they will only do background ventilation unless needed. They are silent out the box. One in each wet room (including kitchen). No trickle vents in wet rooms. Trickle vents in dry rooms with humidity activated vent control. Undercut all doors for easy cross flow with doors closed. 4 fans cost about £4 year to run. You only have enough ventilation, not over or under vented. No ducts, no filters.

Getting my SE to design it and can then get it quoted up. Will report back!

Good news you managed to resolve this! I have heard of this kind of thing before and wonder if a way around it is to simply apply for planning again showing the current state of the site as existing and your proposed design as proposed, with a slight amendment that is enough to be considered a 'material change'. You could then claim that what has been constructed already has been done so without planning and is nothing to do with the original application (which they are attempting to claim the CIL on). It would add 8 weeks to the build but give you another go at filling in the cill forms and in affect, you can claim the original permission was never acted upon. Would be a long shot and might need a little more thought, but would be worth a go rather than spending the ridiculous sums being mentioned.

900mm (or less than 1400mm) means broken necks and dead kids. That’s a massive NO. Have a proper pool that you can jump into without ending up in a wheelchair or don’t have one. Dig the hole, make a proper slab with 50% more concrete and 100% more reinforcing steel mesh, and enjoy the fruits of your labour (as you’ll be a lot “less rich” at the end either way, so why go half-cocked?!?). ”Do it”

Amen to that. Thanks so much. Just glad it’s all sorted now, all other issues will hopefully just feel like a stone in the shoe in comparison. Certainly the most helpful, caring and informative forum I’ve ever come across. I will ensure I contribute on a more regular basis and give back where I can.

Thank you. It’s frightening how a few sentences in an email can make the world cave in on you and then the same number of sentences but in a positive note brings instant joy so quickly, all within 24 hours. 🤯

I've been following this with interest. I'm so pleased for you. My heart sunk as I read this. I'm so glad they sorted it so quickly also and had a heart, sleep well tonight. It goes to show, when things go wrong, none of the "professionals" take responsibility. Have a drink today. Take care of the cil formalities and don't forget the latest submissions that are required either. This forum has helped me and so many others on so many issues over the years, and we're all here to give back. Good result! 👏

Get a new architect.

Actually we don’t know if he had it in the first place, hence so much stress (fecking planners). well I am so pleased this has been resolved quickly, your sense of relief must be huge, this is such a great community in times like this. 🍷 💃 🕺 🥤 🍸 at least you will sleep tonight (pissed 🤣)

I don’t know about that, the pump and pool I fitted had the pump outlet at the deep end (about 1.8 m if I remember correctly) and just below the water surface, the plume (volume of pumped water) was in a conical shape from the outlet and no where near the bottom. It worked really well because if you wanted to swim hard you tried to get near the pump outlet, the further away you got the water volume diminished so you could work less hard and decide (by distance) how hard you wanted to swim.

I read through this earlier in horror - so pleased you got it sorted. I can't imagine what the last couple of days have been like!

I have a hunch that you’ll remember that even without reminders 😅

I wonder how CIL liability and commencement works if it's extending an already existing house - you have 3 years to start from pp but what if you want to do other permitted development works first? Maybe you want to replace the roof or other significant works. What if in this situation the home owner had responded that they hadn't commenced works on the CIL liable work, they're just doing a separate extension which doesn't require pp?

The government are fairly fond of cliff edge ‘now you’re f….d’ rules. This kind of thing needs to be stopped both in the private sector but especially in the public sector.

(Don’t rest until you get the reply that acknowledges you’re exempt and amount due = £0.00; and then the for that acknowledges you’ve commenced. Then you can enjoy all the other challenges!)

@Berkshire_selfbuid very pleased for you indeed. Do you need any help with the forms? (Can share my examples if you wish) Suggest you put both names (you & your wife) on the form, or at least consider it.

Federation of Master Builders - agreed it with the main contractor a while ago without really understanding the implications. It looks fine on paper, but not many building societies have it on their pre-approved panel, so it might cause headaches. LABC or NHBC is probably better choices.

Well done, I'm glad it's worked out well for you.

It's not "windows in walls" per se but "glazing in buildings" and the dimension given in Diagram 3.1 gives a minimum dimension floor to cill of 800mm. That would be the minimum height of the bottom of the rooflight measured vertically to the floor. Replacing your roof lights requires you not to make the means of escape any worse than it was. It sounds like the lower sited windows would be an improvement and certainly better than 1.2m which would be too high to get out of. Bear in mind you don't need escape windows if you have a protected escape route down the stairs to a final exit.

That's not very vague. Depending on context perhaps it is pompous more than a threat. I've come across that. 'I follow policy, others rubber stamp stuff through'. What happened to them eventually, or best not say?

I just did the sums. A 200 litre cylinder heated from 30°C to 60°C, with electricity at £0.12/kWh will cost ~£306/year. Evan at full price electricity, or heating it up twice a day, would still work out about the same as a Sunamp.

thanks for that.

You can have it any height you want as long as it complies with having a system to stop somebody falling against it and cutting themselves, safety glass, or to stop somebody falling through it, safety glass, or somebody opening it and falling through the opening, window restrictor. you can basically do what you want as long as it complies with a few simple regs.

Builders are conservative beasts, understandably so, as big a recall to a job could break them, so they stick with what they know. However this can lead to change paralysis, where they won't every try anything new and will make every excuse under the sun to avoid it. Insulated metal sheeting is technically far simpler to construct than an EDPM roof, and in my opinion far less lightly to go wrong. Get the Kingspan data sheet and give it to your builder and cajole them along the way. They'll probably soften out quickly enough once they think about it.

Submit them. If they find out and complain, and can explain why what you're doing is in breach, they can threaten to sue you for damages. IANAL, but presumably damages are realistically likely to be no more than the original charge for the report (or their current charge for the same, not that that's relevant if they're no longer trading).

Add a separate filter box to increase your choice of filter - which can also be larger & so require less frequent changing. I have the Paul / Zehnder Iso-box DN 160 filter box (though not sure if it's still sold in the UK - I got mine here: https://www.econology.fr/zehnder-comfosystems-caisson-filtrant-isobox-dn-160-filtre-a-pollen.html). But there are other brands available.

If only. EDF who I am with, estimate the amount based on average usage. Trouble is that it is not my average usage, but national average for a house that uses E7, so about 3 times what I use. I refuse to set up a direct debit with them as they once tried to bill me £2500, when that was refused by my bank because I did not have enough money in my account, they tried to bill me £1999, that was refused as well, then they tried £999 (refused). The amount owed was about £60, but I got left with £90 bank charges, which Santander refused to refund, and EDF said it was not their problem. I cancelled my direct debit and went to quarterly postal billing by cash/cheque , which is not available any more. This got changed to monetary billing, without any notification or warning. These energy companies just do what they like, and getting a proper resolution is time consuming and exhausting. Swapping provider, when you are a very low user, is not worth the effort.

Variable direct debit is exactly what it says on the tin. Unspecified amounts at unspecified times. They give you the appropriate notice and you will be called upon. Don’t pay, cancel DD etc during dispute or uncertainty and risk being passed over to credit collection and blacklist.

I did consider in one of my fancyful moments at the beginning of my project if I had to demolish what i had in the flight of fancy I emialed a chineese stone suplier and they assured me i could have any size or thickness of granite blocks that would be accurate to +or- minus 1-2mm with smooth cut faces and at £1800 per ton delivered FOB to uk then add another £80 per ton to be delivered by road and the fancyfull thoughts continued for a little a pallet of blocks ia about 1.2tons and was around £100 a pallet then and granite is approx 50% heavier than concrete blocks apallet of blocks would build 8sqm -- it became obvious that it would not be viable so 8sqm of granite would be 20times the price of concrete blocks at a rough calculation even using std blocks with large section granite cladding or some other stone still made it unaffordable to normal mortals maybe stone slips to outside of block work would ve affordable to some and give same effect I did not win the lottery --so that idea got shelved would have been great to build something that looked like a bank building using thin set cement as for the condesation risk I did not see that as any worse than any other sort of solid wall as granite takes along time to pass heat through it in either direction so does insulate quite well for a solid product and is totally imperious to water , and when all said and done it is only a water screen and rest of build would be as any other modern build