kandgmitchell

Nanny state stuff again - could get worse after July 4th....................

But it does matter - a lot! It was this forum that saved us £4500 in SDLT as our solicitor had filled in the forms for us and told us it would be £4500. One assumes they know what they are about. I then read a post on here which set me thinking and doing more research. Because our plot was originally agricultural, the tax bands were different and the actual SDLT was zero. After filling in the appropriate forms ourselves, HMRC refunded the lot plus interest.

I'd second that, I really can't see that the level of risk warrants that sort of precaution. I'd worry about charging an electric bike in the hallway but a fridge? Just get the project signed off without the fridge and then get on with the life you want afterwards.

The development as a whole may start from your rear boundary but that would include all the open space around the proposed buildings. You may find that there is indeed a gap between you and the nearest building. It's rare for the planners to allow new buildings on such a large site to sit against the development boundaries simply because there is space available to reduce the impact on existing properties. You may for instance find it's the school planning field that abuts your fence rather than the back wall of a supermarket. If there is a planning application in for the development then you can see it on the council's website and consider what is proposed in detail. You will have a chance to comment and make your views known. Take up that option and argue your case if needed.

So does the land actually appear in the Brownfield register held by the LA? If not who told you it was brownfield (previously developed) land?

Well I hope someone pops up. Ideally you need someone local and ideally with a relationship with the LA if you are using their BCO's. The regs vary for commercial stuff - sometimes easier, sometimes harder than for domestic building. You'll also need some decent plans for the fire officer consultation done by whoever does your BC work.

A first floor extension on a commercial property... You are going to need someone who knows what they are doing to get that approved. Find an architectural technician or an ex. bco who now submits plans. Ask your builder if he knows anyone - they usually have a few contacts. You aren't going to be able to do this yourself without substantial technical knowledge.

Ditto, all your interactions should be in written format. I presume you have had a letter from the planning department and not just a verbal request from an enforcement officer. If you used the LA for building control I'm amazed that they have let this go this far. Threats of enforcement action should never be made lightly by a Council (normally the planners would have run the scenario past their legal department) so you need to be professional in response and stop this nonsense in it's tracks. Put your position in writing and insist on a response likewise in writing.

And always remember the Town and Country Planning Act Section 55 says: The following operations or uses of land shall not be taken for the purposes of this Act to involve development of the land— (a)the carrying out for the maintenance, improvement or other alteration of any building of works which— (i)affect only the interior of the building, or (ii)do not materially affect the external appearance of the building, So internal works to strengthen/repair a barn would not be classed as "development" and if it's not development then the planners are not involved not matter what the building is used for.

If the original house front door remains then a porch is exempt BRegs up to 30m2 (subject to having safety glazing in the correct locations). If the door has been removed then it's a hall extension. Built getting on for 10 years ago? No direct action for contravention after 12 months so Sept 2015 ish, now long gone. They can still obtain an injunction to prevent a contravention persisting but for a 10 year porch? No way, I've only heard of that being used once. It's not going to happen here. The Council never ties PP to BRegs, whoever carries out the work should know the law and go through the process, they didn't, but assuming its sound, doesn't leak and isn't damp nothing has been lost except the paperwork. By all means buy an indemnity but it seems a bit of a waste of money. By the time you come to sell, that porch will be even older and even less interest to the authorities than it is now.

You can't enlarge a dwellinghouse in a conservation area by altering or adding to it's roof by using permitted development. You'll need planning permission whatever face it's on. Not to say it wouldn't be approved if sympathetically done.

Well no the caravan wasn't insulated enough but you get what you get - 25mm polystyrene between a metal skin and vinyl coated hardboard. For a 12 month stay it's not worth overcladding the outside (ruining any resale) and it's small enough inside already. So yes you have to suck up the extra cost of using electric heaters. As for a 4x4m shed - luxury! SWHMBO has put up with a 6' x 4' with washing machine and tumble dryer and a small freezer balanced across them. This is a building plot not a sports field. What with a sloping site needing to take a 100m2 footprint house plus scaffold space, a 36' x 12' static, two 20' containers with our stuff in them not to mention two cars which can't be left on the single width track outside; add materials and contractors vans.... As for mud - don't have any! Wish! We did have stone laid but hey as soon as a machine gets digging during wet weather I defy anyone to say their site stayed clean. Just taking the machine from excavation to low loader spreads mud across the access let alone moving around the site. All that lovely stone laid under the sun disappears under a coating of glutinous brown clay that sticks to everything. It's then you find out why you kept all those offcuts of carpet in the loft of the previous house - told you they'd be useful! Throwaway door mats - the latest thing. I wouldn't say these are negative views, just saying as it is. If you can't manage a bit of discomfort (or even the occasional "why the f... did we start this" screaming match) then self building is probably not your thing. Go buy a nice house already done for you. With a clean driveway.

From the Planing Inspectorates own statistics. From 2019 there have never been more than 30% successful appeals overall and for the written representations approach (for most domestic stuff) success rate hovers between 25% and 28%. You'd be better off with a public enquiry where success rate was 66% in Jan-March 2023 but that may be a bit much for a shed!

The issue seems to be that by using goats to control the weeds the land may somehow lose it's brownfield status and become classed as agricultural (or any of the other uses excluded from the brownfield definition). I am assuming that the land is on the Council's brownfield register and they are meant to update it every year (but probably in the same way as they are meant to maintain the roads). I can't see that using a small number of goats/pigs as environmentally sound land maintenance is going to make the Council think this is now a viable agricultural unit or a playing field, or domestic garden etc etc and should be removed from the register.

With the new house being in the open countryside it may be the planners want to keep "domestic clutter" such as sheds etc close to the house so as to reduce the impact on openness. In AONB, National Parks etc there is a general rule that PD outbuildings cannot be more than 20m from the house if the total floor area exceeds 10m2 for a similar reason. The condition on your approval removing PD rights would have a reason attached to it - that may give you a lead on the planners thoughts. It's a difficult one. Do you move the shed position and get on with things or take the refusal and appeal with all the delay that entails and no guarantee of success - Inspectors do agree with Councils quite a lot you know (roughly 70% of the time). I'd go back to the planners and get a clearer understanding of where they are coming from and look to get a compromise - additional planting to shield the shed, a change in colour, offer to let them condition that in any approval. If they are not willing to play ball, it'll come down to how soon you want that shed I'm afraid.

Cost was an issue for us as well. The static was £7500 inc delivery with a deal to buy it back at £3750 within 12 months . We may just make that so "rent" would be £300 odd a month. The furniture is in a 20ft container on site avoiding the £90/week the removal company wanted to store it. I accept there are on costs to a self build that cannot be avoided but I'd rather keep as much money back to fund the odd extravagance my dear wife insists will set the finished job off.....

Two of us and we've been in a static on site for 9 months now. I won't say it's been easy but we got into a routine with some electric heaters on timers and others on remote switches so we could warm up the bedroom without getting out of bed. Only one day of frozen water but that was really my fault as our excavations had exposed our temporary water supply and I hadn't dealt with it. The advantages - on site all the time so it became more like home. It allowed us to do some landscaping/hedging/tree planting and lots of thinking about how we should lay out the exterior whilst sitting in the sun. We could control deliveries and sub-contractors easier as we were there - no commute. We have two cats so we could get then used to the site and settle them in. Cheaper than renting in some town centre with no parking and we'll sell on the static when we're done. Disadvantages - the mud. Make sure you have plenty of hardstanding laid because walking from car to caravan and back was a nightmare during this really wet winter! Also my wife moans about having the washing machine in a shed behind the caravan. Why any woman should complain about having their own laundry room I don't know. Finally, being on site gets you embedded into the community. We now know loads of faces because people stop and ask you how you are getting on. You find out all the gossip and some useful contacts, we had two offers of a house sit in the village over Christmas whilst the owners were away. I'd be on site. Would I do it again ? No but with the end in sight now I'm glad we did.

So what is the lawful current use of the surrounding land?

Those proposed escape windows will have to be guarded against falling out as they have a cill height of less than 800mm. Very pertinant given that poor child that fell out of a 15th floor flat through an unsecure window. I can't see any panic hardware being suitable in that situation.

Reading the original post again. The simplified method of dealing with glazing in an extension is 25% of the floor area of the extension added to the area of the original openings which are now enclosed should be equal or greater than the total new glazed openings. So, you have a 28m2 extension so at 25% that is 7m2 which is nearly equal to your 7.5m2 of doors. If your original openings equal at least 6.0m2 (3 x 2m2 roof lights) then you're ok. If not then as mentioned by Redbeard you can do an area weighted calculation where you offset the extra glazing with higher levels of insulation to compensate. If after all that, you can't show it works then I'm afraid it's the SAP calculation if BC insist on it.

Don't just get a house sales SAP calc done. It's a specific one that will compare the house with your extension against the house with a "notional" extension of the same size. The proposed should obviously be better than the standard notional one to comply. Actually it can be harder to prove compliance for a modern house than for an older one simply because the contrast in benefit overall, between a highly insulated extension on an old house, is more than one on a house that is already highly insulated. Just explain to a SAP assessor that you need to prove the extension complies even though you have more than 25% floor area in glazing - they'll know what you're after.

It's not a particularly specialised slab, it's just a little awkward (and has to be "right" dimensionally and level). They want a min. 150mm thick slab to lay their dpm over and then stand the frame on and fix down to. They then dress another dpm skirt off the bottom of the frame onto the vertical face of the slab. In a local DW build they used traditional foundations, built up to level with blockwork and cast their slab across the whole lot. That meant they needed formwork around the perimeter to contain the slab (normally the slab would be within the blockwork on a traditional build). Add to that their internal floor insulation used to comply with BRegs by itself but the last changes meant that some additional underslab insulation is needed as well. We therefore used an insulated raft design. The formwork and under slab insulation is then covered all in one. The only frustration was that they wanted the upstand insulation removed so that their dpm skirt could be fixed to the vertical concrete. I removed that, stored it and will fix it back after completion. If you go that route then make sure the upstand is removable. We used Greenraft who use a plastic "fin" on a strip to join the horizontal and vertical, so removal was easy. I've covered the foundation cost elswehere but it was about £20K (100m2) inc some drainage and a bit of cutting into a slope . One quote for the DW suggestion was £65K. I get the impression that DW are aware of the foundation issue and the rise of insulated rafts following the reg changes, but being based in Poland and feeding the German market it's not had the highest priority. That lack of awareness is illustrated by them not offering a half glazed door option. This is due apparently to the Germans not normally having "back doors". After a concerted push by the UK sales people, they have now added such a door to the options for the UK market.....

Unless there's reasonable fall into that drain then the water is just going to pond, will you be able to dress the EPDM into the drain enough to stop water seeping back under the new sheeting? You might find balck EDPM gets very hot in the sun for bare feet!

No requirement for a trap if just to a soakaway.

So that staircase has two "flights", the upper one and the lower one separated by the quarter landing. Treads in a flight should have the same rising and going. This reflects that you build up a rythmn when using a stair and an odd tread will cause you to trip. So, you could remove a tread from the lower flight but then you would have two risers and not three with each riser being just too high. You could swap the landing and lower flight for winders. I was interested in your idea of adding 150mm PIR over the existing floor, covered by presumably timber sheet material. Surely that will make all your doors 170mm shorter, put the bottom of the radiators on the floor, alter that under stair wc and create a step at the front door etc etc? All to make the current stair look like the desired picture. Sounds like a lot of work to me!