Daniel H

Thanks @LnP - all I was flagging was that the LPA is often fine with a statement about being a self-builder in the Planning Statement or similar and therefore exempt from BNG. Ours was and put it in the Officer's Report. It would then only become a problem if you want to go to appeal, with the options you laid out then available. Not much of an exemption and I think there needs to be a simple process for self-builders to certify, rather then the restrictive UUs used at the moment.

Hi all We were just about to submit our appeal documents and my PIN friend told me something interesting on BNG which has already cropped up in the forum. They said we either had to have a legal document showing we were self-builders (the UU of others on this forum) or submit a BNG assessment. They said they'd dismissed three cases recently where self-builders didn't do this and there was another on their desk which was going the same way. So my advice is don't stress about it when you're making your initial planning application (planners are busy and won't care unless there's a policy or process locally as some have flagged), but if you're going to appeal you should do one or the other. We've asked our ecologist to do the assessment as I don't want to tie our hands when it comes to being able to get a mortgage for the build. It's not the end of the world if you don't do this - the inspector will still need to write their report before saying 'despite all of this, I'm dismissing it', and you can just resubmit the application (if they find in your favour obvs) with the BNG assessment. A pain but not the showstopper it could be. Hope this helps!

Sounds brilliant - if the officer is behind you, you should have no problems. You won't be asked questions, so the planning consultant won't be needed. But emotional support is also important! Let us know how you get on!

The report ought to be out ahead of the meeting - a week or two often - so check their portal for that. If there are no objections from the planning officer, you can focus on the human side of why you ought to get permission. Unlikely the committee will have read any of your stuff, so don't draw attention to the objections if you don't have to. If there are conditions, you could welcome them as practical etc in the hope you'll get waved through by the committee. I'd suggest it's a bit late to get a planning consultant involved especially if it's looking positive. If you're up for refusal, you could ask your architect and speak yourself. You could try a consultant but it'll take them a while to get up to speed and with three minutes there's not a lot of substance they can put up. If you're being refused for the proximity to the road and it's the same as the existing permission, you can point it out and the committee might agree - and if not, you have excellent grounds for appeal. Good luck! We were refused but it felt great defending a project we believe in so strongly.

Huge news - great work.

@flanagaj - I would make sure your architect puts your responses on the portal to ensure it's there and doesn't drop off the side. And sometimes a proposal will be pulled into the committee if there are a minimum number of comments that go against the judgement of the planning officer.

Just to update you on the latest. Everything up on the Portal now and delighted that the Parish Council supported our application. First comment too! So the work we did to introduce ourselves and address their concerns certainly paid off. We have reached out to people we know locally with an ask to support (assuming there will be a comparable campaign on the objection side!) and will see how that goes. Will update... Assuming we go to planning committee middle of March. Something to get our heads round.

Given there are issues in the objectors' emails that you can argue against I suggest you or your architect do a sweep of them and upload your own comments as a response to them. I wouldn't want misinformation to land with the planning officers. Don't give up on some supportive comments - do you know anyone nearby who you can ask politely? And you can often find past planning meetings online - our LPA posts everything on YouTube - so getting a flavour might be possible at home. But agree - turning up and pressing the flesh feels like the right thing. Suggest emailing the members of the committee ahead of the meeting with a summary of the proposal. I understand that presenting to the committee yourself is the done thing, but make sure your planning consultant is on the drafting team! The policy should be dealt with by the planning officer, and I think some human story goes a long way in these places. I also think your planning officer wants to pass the scheme, so do what they say and be seen to do so, and I think that will help a lot. (fyi, our scheme is in with the planners now and we're expecting to go to the planning committee in March)

Thanks @G and J - I'm in two minds. Partly I'd like to try to let things go under the radar, but you are right: people will spot the sign and talk about it! Mainly the people we know are the very local folk. We also did think we'd put a card and an explainer into all the local homes. I think people might like that. And @TerryE - We'll certainly get some objections and that's, I think, par for the course. I have tried to anticipate these and just make sure there's a robust defence or report where needed. We've tried to be quite clear where the proposal is an improvement on the existing planning permission and accentuate the positive!

Thanks for your advice! @Marvin - we've covered as many of these points as we possibly could. I agree most people won't engage, although we have met a lot of very nice folk whom I'm not above begging to say something nice! @ToughButterCup - the new search functionality helps on the Planning Portal enormously. We have a sense of the Planning Officer and his approach (plus he did our pre-app!) so the slightly thin ice is flagged already. My hope is to show the neighbours are keen on these aspects and if it's just his subjective opinion, that other equally subjective opinions express the other view. Appreciate your engagement very much. The application is up there on the Portal and just waiting for the documents to go live before the lovebombing starts!

Hi folks! We have finally submitted our planning application - big news! We've been lucky enough to meet some really wonderful neighbours and I'd like to ask for their support of our application. I can find plenty of content on the best ways to object to planning applications, but are there 'material' reasons for support? I'd like to offer a set of reasons to people so they have something significant to say. Or is it more a case that any comments in support are good on the basis that they're so rare in the first place? Advice gratefully received!

If you already have a report they usually say they last 2 years so you might not need a new one. And if you don't get the right reports or it looks like you're not playing the game, the LPA Conservation Officer will start digging more, I suspect. But do shop around. Also this is a bad time of year for this kind of report as things start to hibernate so you might need to hold off til May, or ask for it to be a planning condition that you get a report in the season. There are costs and you will need to pay them, I'm afraid - key question is how much.

If you want a 😬story, you're welcome to our list. Some background: we're in a Conservation Area in a National Park with a Listed Building nearby. Planning on the hardest setting. There's a derelict building on site which we'd like to remove and put up a two-storey detached building. There is a lovely old house ("non-listed heritage asset") immediately to the north (so we have an impact on their light). Ready? Planning Consultant £3000 - the National Park has a LOT of policies and they love rejecting applications as far as we can see and we will automatically be referred to the Planning Committee and probably go to appeal so we thought it best to invest early - if going to appeal, inspectors can only go on what was submitted in the planning application, so we wanted to ensure we were properly ready for that. Heritage Consultant £3500 - the number one reason we'll get refused is on heritage grounds, so we are opting for a very tight argument here and I see this as money well spent. Ecologist £1575 - I think we were scheduling this at the busiest time of year so paid more than perhaps we would have if we had planned it in earlier. Who required a... Bat survey £1300 - as above, but we did shop around for this. Daylighting Assessment £1700 - we assume the neighbours will object on daylight grounds so we have opted to do all the calculations up front (we got a 50% discount on this). Ground Investigation £3175 - we're on a hill and we know there will be questions around party walls etc. Hope to make this back in appropriately-engineered foundations! So yeah, it's been eye watering to get this far. Don't forget to add VAT! It's a labour of love and while we might not get PP, we're doing everything we can to tip the scales in our favour. I know there will be plenty of folks here who are in an easier planning context and for that reason probably can do a lot themselves, but we're not in that fortunate position and so some professional help was needed. Hoping to apply for PP this side of Christmas. Will report back.

The event went really well. We had a lot of positive feedback and some clear next steps. Thanks for the advice and support. I think your idea of a community impact assessment is good @Bozza - we'll use that as a way in to the Parish Council when we see them in December. There's some issue with uploading the jpgs of the consultation boards, so I am going to have to leave it this time and figure out a way to do it when I have a second.

Wow, @Ferdinand - that's so funny. I had no idea. I mean, sure I know it's steep (the rock climbing is at the top!) but not world-record steep! @Bozza - really appreciate your thoughts. It will be so helpful to hear about any issues (we already learned there is a sewage pipe under the site 🙃) and love the idea of carefully and gently asking for risks so that we can mitigate them. We already had a good one on craned deliveries during school drop off and pick up time.