the_r_sole

Appeals in edinburgh will likely add 8-12 months onto the determination date, very much a last resort

@AliG I'm no stranger to planners incompetence - Edinburgh have always refused to talk to you during the application process and refuse things without giving you the chance to wirhdraw/amend, it's a terrible system they have. I've had a bit of joy before by emailing the officer, their team leader, the head of planning, the head of the council, the local Councillor for the area and an msp - all copied into the same email addressed to the head of planning. If you complain about it, you're going to get the same level of terrible service, I usually try to keep them on side but there's a point when that goes out the window!

It's easy to not have the things they're saying are out of keeping, whether there's other examples around you or commercial access etc. What's more important, a house or a big entrance? Easy compromise for me here...

what did they offer as a compromise? just take out everything, fence, walls, road surfacing etc and submit for a gravel access track with the bare minimum tarmac bellmouth and get permission for the house - the rest can be done as a future application when you're in the house! (most folk end up taking out large bits of hard landscaping once they get costs back anyway!)

Moving a house would generally be considered a material variation, it will have different distances to boundaries etc so perhaps more to consider for the planners, I would be tempted to submit a non material variation application anyway and get the formal reasoning...

Is it floating?! If it was me I'd go back to the architect and try to get an understanding of what's actually being proposed and how practical it is - increasing the floor height of an extension doesn't generally remove the need to build it off something and the cost of foundations for a 16m2 extension isn't likely to be a huge item so there's clearly something else at play here. Get a QS to give you a realistic budget cost

planning validation is done by technicians and not planning officers and they regularly ask for information which isn't relevant to the application - they've got worse and worse over the last few years to a point where i've been in a public meeting where a planning consultant accused the local authority of using it as a delay tactic to control the work load of officers....

I don't understand why a qs can't do this? We regularly have a qs prepare outline budget costs at the concept design stage - they have to make a lot of assumptions and will give a pessimistic view but at least you know if you're in the right ball park. Builders at the moment are busy this is a time wasting exercise for them, we're struggling to get prices back for jobs which are ready to go on site, so I'd be surprised if you found any builder who's going to put time into pricing something that might never happen

He's the skilled professional, you won't figure out any viable option without his input, that's what you're paying him for ? - talk to them about the options as they'll have all the information to hand to advise you properly.

There's lots of options to do this, but all of them need a structural engineers input! If you've got a wall on the centre line it would seem a bit strange to then put a full length ridge beam above it... easier to get the guy with the insurance to design it than asking what size of beams others have used ?

There's a bit of confusion here, the architect would act as a contract administrator whilst the work is on site - not a project manager (a QS might also do this role which is why they'll be advising to ditch the architect) If you're at the stage of nearly building and you haven't got enough trust in your architect that they're not acting in your best interest then don't go any further - contrary to popular belief I've never worked with any architect who would deliberately inflate costs to get more fees, they also should have zero financial incentive to steer you to their "preferred" contractors - that would be contrary to the code of conduct (and pointless) As mentioned, building control drawings are not construction drawings and won't have enough information to build from, so you're much more at the mercy of a contractor making assumptions if that's what you use as a basis for a contract, also if you're borrowing money to do the work you may find that a mortgage provider requires details of the contract being used and details of the contract administrator... But as I said earlier, if you've got this far any you don't trust the architect there's something very wrong in the relationship so probably not worth continuing with them - if one of my clients told me they were worried I would inflate costs for my own gain on their project that would be a red flag which would end my involvement.

It's a massive lump of house! Do you need all that floor area? There's lots of it but it's not a very efficient floor plan... on the elevations there's definitely work to be done there to add some interest and detail

You must be in the 1% of the 1% of clients there! Nobody I've ever worked with wants to pay out for lots of surveys prior to the grant of planning permission. The more outlay you have before an approval the more risk you are taking on, it's much more prudent to achieve a permission then add supplementary information to clear conditions

yup. the notional boundary is usually measured to the centre of roads/rivers etc - got me out of many a jam that!

Buildstore are the biggest self build mortage brokers in Scotland so they do know their onions - there's a load of misunderstanding on cladding and the fire regulations at the moment, especially in terms of the scottish building regs, even more so in the fall out from grenfell. The issue you have is that most of the self build mortgages are provided by english companies who limit their exposure in scotland - but definitely speaking to as many brokers as you can

More eyes on a project will mean more bits are picked up ime - you will find all kinds of caveats to signing off building regs drawings, usually just that anything on site has to meet the regs no matter what's approved on a drawing! You'll just have to wait to see what the outcome of their discussion is - usually with regs on domestic it's a pretty straight forward "it complies" or "it doesn't comply" - what you have to do is get a written confirmation of what regulation it is that they are saying is not being met then you can work out a solution

Most topo surveys for a single site we have are around 600 quid, we usually get a couple of quotes and they're never significantly different - definitely not 180 quid vs 600! They can be extremely useful if you're getting quotes for groundworks, drainage and foundations as you've got quantifiable information to reduce the assumptions contractors are making. Can also help with details of trees/walls/fences, setting out, ridge heights for planning etc. We'd always recommend that clients get one, for 600 quid in the grand scheme of things you could save that on the groundworks package with more accurate information! I have done a number of sites without them and it just means you have more unknowns to account for, but I have had planning insisting that ridge heights are set in relation to ordnance survey datum and also had roads insist that an access drawing is done with precise levels

again that's down to communication - we generally do a few options for people and it's never what the project turns out as but it's an exploration of how the brief can work within the constraints of the site, the final option is usually a combination of the ideas from different options. Sometimes at the early stages it's as important to figure out what you don't like as much as what you do!

But have you asked him to design something that he thinks will get planning or have you asked him to draw up your designs and try to get it through planning? It's two completely different requests. I can't fathom why he would waste time and energy drawing something different if his task was the latter, but then it also sounds like you've completely skipped the briefing and design development stages to get to a planning application so something doesn't feel right about the process....

See, you're using your architect wrong, getting a person who's skill is in design to do cad plans from your scaled drawings is a waste of everyone's time and expertise. Maybe he's taken your plan and made into something that will achieve planning or comply with regs? You've said you've paid him for his ability to get things through planning and his relationship with the planning department, but then you've given him a strict design to follow? If you just want your drawings made into a planning set, use a good local technologist, they will do that cheaper, faster and without trying to develop your design. If we have enquiries from someone who "just needs a set of drawings for planning" and doesn't want any of the design stage we always recommend a technologist who we work with. It's just not a valuable exercise to pay Architects to do the mechanical process bits of a project.

Very strange, what have they been working to if not your brief?

yeah, the end users are never the problem, it's the box tickers where the issues can be!

You can, but you need to argue with your solicitor and the buying solicitor that it's the way to do it and not the retrospective/certificate of lawfulness route. I once send a 5 page explanation to solicitors of why a project met permitted development rules, quoted all the specific clauses etc - they said it wasn't acceptable because I had been paid to design it! The report was 100% factually correct and couldn't be disagreed with but it still wasn't acceptable to solicitors who didn't know the difference between building regs and planning...

anything bigger than 6m will result in a retrospective planning application - although any enforcement action is unlikely unless you have a neighbour complaining, also might raise an issue when you try to sell, solicitors don't seem to understand permitted development at the best of times!

The ownership or any title deed restrictions are nothing at all to do with planning permission, the planning department only consider planning issues - the best bet in this scenario is to get a solicitor to establish that the need an agreement with the other party to build, and then tell them that - it's possible to get planning permission for something that is unable to be "legally" built (I've had this on a couple of projects!)