Tony K

Hi all After obtaining planning permission for my SB, I then got full plans approval under the building regulations. I used a partnership authority arrangement, where your plans are checked by the officers of a local Council other than your own, but the actual site inspections are undertaken by your own local authority building inspectors. My full plans application was approved under the building regulations by the checking authority. I have now started digging the footings, and my neighbour, who will not listen to reason under any circumstances, has complained to the local building control officer about an element of the project. Everything is, and will be, in accordance with the approved plans. To my amazement, the local building inspector tells me that he is minded to agree with the complaint, and find that this particular element of the SB is not compliant with the building regulations. I have contacted the checking authority who have reiterated that there is no issue whatsoever with this aspect of my design, and that it was considered fully against the regs when they approved it. Leaving aside the simple fact that he is wrong, can the local building inspector overrule the fact that the project has full plans approval already? I believe his role is simply to check that the work is carried out as shown on the plans, not to revisit the decision to grant approval, but I cannot find a regulation or law to that effect. Has anyone experienced such a thing before? I've put the local inspector in touch with the checking authority who are happy to speak to him, but it is stressful. Thanks!

I can only get a mini digger on site, hence the concern. I think I've solved the problem now. I will rearrange the attenuation tank into a more shallow pattern, allowing me to use a 1.5m deep pump. This in turn will only require a 1.7m deep hole.

My own advice is to never, ever rely on a phone call to the planning department, or even a letter /email. Firstly your likely to get through to some kind of generic reception, or at best the admin department of the planning office. Actual planning officers are now so thin on the ground and often dealing with large workloads that the last thing they are allowed to do is answer general enquiries. Secondly, even if you get a reply it'll either just direct you to generic information sources (not helpful to you in this case) or offer an informal view that comes with a disclaimer, and so doesn't offer any protection. As @DevilDamo says, you can apply for a certificate of lawfulness, but if you're going to do that you may as well just apply for planning permission. Personally I'd be tempted to just put the fence up. Based on the photos enforcement action seems unlikely, but there is a risk of course.

@Al1son There are three things I would add to the correct advice given already by @DevilDamo 1. Explore fully whether the path is one over which the public have the right to pass. Even if the wider estate is owned by the Council, the pathway may be for residents only (i.e not for the public, regardless of whether they actually use it anyway), and if the estate is private (i.e the open areas outside the houses are not maintained by the Council) then it is likely the path is not public. Look for signs around the estate saying 'private, residents only' etc. 2. If you do need planning permission then either accept it and apply, or accept the risk of putting up the fence without permission. A great many houses get a slightly rougher deal in terms of needing planning permission when their neighbours do not. A classic example is of a house at the very end of a street, adjacent to another road. A fence over one metre high in the location marked in red needs planning permission, where all the ones in green do not: The good news is that no sensible planning department is going to refuse a decent tall fence in the red locations. The bad news is they can't help the fact that you technically need planning permission, and can't give you a short cut to the system. An application may be overkill, but it is legally necessary if you are adjacent to a highway. Of course, you could just build it and see if they come and make you take it down. They probably won't, but there is a risk there, and its probably not to be advised therefore given the relative costs of an application vs the fence itself. 3. Check your deeds. Even if you don't need (or you obtain) planning permission, some estates have restrictive covenants in the deeds preventing tall fences. That's nothing to do with the planning dept, and you should consider it sepeatly. Good luck!

Yeah, dig down in stages. Could work, but when I come to put the clay back in the hole the driver is sitting in, it often won't play nicely. More to the point though, would you think a decent mini digger can go to even 1.4 deep in thick clay? Should be OK surely, but I've not gone so deep down with a small machine before. For context, the top level (i.e the garden) has already been reduced by about 60cm from its original level, so I am actually going pretty deep down from original ground, if that makes a difference. Thanks for the suggestion.

Afternoon all. My SB, on nigh-impenetrable clay, needs a pump to discharge surface/rain water into the main network. The drainage engineer has designed a standard system whereby an attenuation tank (basically soakaway crates wrapped in plastic) links to a large pump. The tank has got to sit a certain distance below the surface, simply so that it is buried under enough weight not to float up out of the ground. The pump must sit a certain distance beneath the base of the tank, otherwise the system doesn't work: Thing is, the hole I would need for the pump is about 1.8m deep. I can only get a mini digger to my site, and though we have used a great little machine to dig out a mountain of clay so far for the footings etc, I am concerned that it might not reach so deep into the clay for this job. The spec says it can reach, but I have heard that there may be more to it than what the spec says alone! Has anyone used a mini digger to go that deep? Any problems at all? My other option is to create a more shallow, but equally voluminous tank, which I can do by laying the crates across the site more and into the ground less. That means the pump will only need to go about 1.4m deep, but even that seems no small task for a mini digger. If anyone has any experience on this issue they can share I'd be grateful!

Hi all This is almost certainly a daft question to those in the know, but... My SB is flat roofed, and I have designed it with a fairly high number of small rooflights to fit between the joists. This is helpful in that I don't have to muck about reinforcing larger openings, but unhelpful in that I have to build far more upstands than I otherwise would. Is it possible to get rooflights with the upstand supplied as part of the unit, and if so, are they any good? Finally, if anyone has a recommendation for cheap, small rooflights I'd be grateful. Thanks

@Bozza sorry I meant to reply sooner. Everything you say is plainly right and I have followed your advice. Cheers

It's an interesting idea in many circumstances I'm sure but to be honest I've done an awful lot to appease them already. I'd probably rather give the money to the surveyor!

Yes I had seen that no response is the same as an objection, just wasn't sure about whether I paid for the lot. I'd be grateful if anyone has any suggestions on an appropriate person to act for me in the PWA. There isn't any dispute over boundaries and I'm not altering their foundations at all, so I'm looking for someone to confirm that which my engineer has already committed to: that the works won't affect my neighbours. I presume that does not have to be a traditional pw surveyor?

Thanks @Mr Punter that's what I needed to know. All my other questions fall away in that case. I will get a price from a PW surveyor and hope my neighbour doesn't waste any more of my money. If we enter 'dispute' as its called, do I have to pay for their surveyor as well?

That's what I really wanted to establish. Obviously my steel screw piles will be deeper than any surrounding foundations, but do they actually count as 'foundations' for the purposes of the act? I can understand driven or bored piles being considered a foundation, but the screws can actually be taken away again, and so could perhaps be treated differently?

Thanks all. I have read the guidance and understand the regulations, but they don't seem to address the specifics of this case, hence my original three questions. I get on OK with the neighbour, though he is a worrier and I think he wants the PWA process so that he can get surveyors involved, all at my expense. That's his right of course, but given I've already shown him my insurance cover, and a specific piece of work from the engineer putting his name (and his professional indemnity insurance) to the fact that my work will not affect his house, that all seems a bit OTT, hence not wanting to do the PWA if I don't need to.

Hi all. My SB is within three metres of the rear elevation of my neighbours house. Between my plot and his house is a footpath about 1 metre wide. His house was built circa 1905 and then extended last year. I am excavating my plot down by 68cm, then using screw piles with a slab on top. Three questions arise: 1. A PWA is required if my footings are deeper than my neighbours, but am I comparing his footings to my 68cm excavation or to the depth of the screw piles? The screws can be unscrewed and taken away in future apparently! 2. My neighbours extension has 1m trench footings, but the original section of his house is likely to have shallower footings. Am I comparing my proposal to his deeper footings or the shallower ones? 3. Neither of us know how deep the footings under the original part of his house are. His rear wall abuts the footpath which is unmade, not adopted, has no registered owner, has rights of way on foot over it for both of us, and has a rough concrete surface with foul and surface drains set into it, including at the base of his wall. If I wanted to know how deep his original footings were then I'd have to break up the path and drains to find out. Given neither of us owns the land, I'm hesitant to do this. Is there any provision in the PWA for circumstances where the depth of a neighbours footings are unknown and cannot be ascertained? Thanks!

To be fair its Thames Water head office blaming baby wipes, the actual workmen are perfectly clear that the pipes are all old, broken, have tree roots in them and all sorts, and need replacing, and that the odd wipe is neither here nor there!

A different little bird whispered some similar things in my ear! Problem is that the local network is prone to blockages (baby wipes seem to be the villain of the piece, even though nobody locally has a baby), and Thames Water are forever around here lifting up manholes and poking about. They would spot any phantom connection pretty quickly. My research into rainwater harvesting is returning some interesting early results. I would need a tank that could hold nearly twice as much rainwater as I would ever likely use - a 7500 lt tank to be precise, measuring some 1.4m deep, 3.3m long and 2.3m wide. That needs a big hole dug for it, though not that much bigger than the one I have already dug for my soakaway, which it would replace. The giant tank is needed because it has to sit half empty all the time, to ensure enough extra capacity to accommodate any 1 in 100 year downpours. I would also still need to connect to the main sewer, because the tank would need to pump water away if it got more than half full. My plans for a green roof would have to be abandoned if I got a harvesting system - you can't harvest from a green roof apparently, or from hard surfaces, which means my patio and artificial turf area would need to be drained separately. The cost for the kit seems to vary from about £3100 to £3700 depending on whether it contains a pump. That actually doesn't compare too badly to the costs of buying the large pump my drainage engineer has specified for the current proposed drainage system. All things considered it is certainly worth investigating further.

Thanks all. The planning dept didn't ask about drainage, and the building control dept signed off the use of a soakaway, though I was aware that it might fail given the clay. For that reason I've done the ground lowering and installed the SA now, well ahead of any actual building work for the house, just to test it. The drainage engineer feels confident that by proposing the attenuation tank, pump etc, Thames Water will have to say yes, what with the house already having approval and there being almost no other feasible options. I will find out in a couple of weeks whether he is right. If Thames Water say no (and even if they say yes) I will explore the use of harvesting systems whether as a preferable alternative even if I can connect to the sewer, or as a back up alternative if I can't.

I can see the general issue of course, but there must be some degree of local variation? If my local network is, for instance, under capacity then I wonder if there is merit in me seeking permission for a direct connection? The line I would connect to is a combined sewer, so I'm not sure I would be affecting the mix of product. I might even be helping to flush things through a little!

I don't know for sure, but I can only get a mini-digger on my site and it was pretty close to the limit of how deep it could dig when we put the soakaway in, so going far deeper probably isn't an option. That was my understanding, and I can demonstrate that the first three options aren't feasible. I just wondered why direct connection to the sewer is such a no-no?

I have considered various set ups like that, but they all fail due to the whereabouts and design of my slab, services, a void for heave, and the sewer connection. Thanks @Oxbow16 but my land has never been touched by human hand, and the clay is consistent all around. My original hope was that someone would say that surface water flowing directly into the main network is demonstrably fine, and that they had experienced as much. Doesn't look like anyone has had that experience though! The next best outcome for me was that someone might come up with a new idea, and though I had discounted harvesting at an earlier stage of my build, that was before all this happened so I will certainly revisit it now, if only to compare the cost of it with the attenuation tank and pump arrangement.

Thanks, I'll look into it. If I've got to pay for a pump then I might as well pay for a harvesting kit instead if it does the same thing.

I don't think it matters really how big the soakaway is if the ground is impermeable. I will look into harvesting but I would still have to pump excess into the network even if I have a harvesting set up.

Hi I have started my SB by reducing the level of the site, digging out some footings and installing a standard soakaway. Recent heavy rain has proved that the soakaway doesn't work as the clay is pretty much impermeable at that depth, which was always a possibility. I have had a drainage engineer produce an alternative design which basically consists of using the soakaway crates as an attenuation tank, connecting a large pump and directing all surface water into the nearby Thames Water sewer network, subject to their permission of course. The Thames Water sewer manhole cover is right outside my site, and the invert level is such that I could connect my downpipes directly into the network and let gravity do the rest. The drainage engineer tells me that Thames Water will not likely accept this approach, as the flow of water will be uncontrolled, whereas with the attenuation tank and pump set up, control can be exercised. I understand that, but its expensive and complicated. Has anyone ever tried to get a mains sewer connection without controlling water flow? Thanks

This is exactly what I'm concerned about. What I don't really understand is roughly how much extra cost is involved in wet weather building. I presume builders charge a bit extra to cover themselves over winter if they get a trench full of water, or because the cay they dig out is heavier to take away, or whatever? I wonder what that extra cost is in percentage terms? I suppose weather will always happen. We had a monsoon in July this year! I reckon I will see how long it takes to get the drainage design agreed and the other paperwork done, then estimate whether I can get the shell watertight before winter.

The footings and slab are complex, but otherwise its simple stuff. Block and brick cavity walls, flat roof. Thing is, once I start I need to keep going, otherwise I'm paying the interest on the SB mortgage for nothing to happen on site. If I can get these three bits wrapped up quickly enough then I may be able to get the shell up before the worst of the weather comes, which I presume would negate the impact of winter?