Daniel H

I reckon likely to be a quirk - getting points for various things and the program spits out the score. I reckon we'll make A with some sensible investments, and even if it's not A, it'll be super efficient.

I have an email from the planning department saying they don't operate CIL. But I will double check - that was a year ago. Any other 'must dos' welcome!

You're absolutely right - the air tightness is surely a major opportunity here (there's a limit to the solar we can install) and attention to that and building it into the tender process will be important. We haven't quite decided how much to do ourselves, but focusing on a few critical points is likely to get the best payoff, I suspect. I will start a thread in due course on the environmental aspects and read up on the rest of the forum for some of expertise from the community.

Well, incoming in that case! Thanks - looking forward, and challenge accepted!

We might do - it's just based on our current SAP. We're at 86. Apparently, according to our consultant, it'll be £4,000 - £6,000 (saving £75/yr) to get one more point to get to 87 or to to get to A (102) it'll cost £15,000 - £25,000 (saving £652/yr). So taking the lower numbers break even conservatively in 53 years for one extra point, or 23 years to get to 102 (without factoring in the cast of the debt). I care a lot about the environment (I work tackling climate change), but I'm not sure why I'd bother doing that...! But we'll see where we get to now we can move to Stage 4.

In case anyone is interested, we had some good news today. To recap: the plot is a disused commercial building, in a village centre, in a Conservation Area, and in a National Park. It's directly overlooked by the neighbours who are on higher ground. There were two reasons for refusal - the impact on the Conservation Area and the impact on the neighbours. We'd offered a detailed study of the local area and showed how our design responded to it. The Inspector agreed with us. But the Inspector agreed with the neighbours that there would be a negative impact on them. He weighed it on the opportunity to redevelop a derelict site, the need for housing and the environmental credentials (EPC B in this case). So that's the end of that chapter. Start = 11 July, site visit = 9 October, decision = 5 February. Thanks for the moral and technical support from this group, and I'm happy to share more details if anyone needs them. Now the actual work begins!

Preliminary Roost Assessments (PRAs) can happen year-round, but peak activity surveys (emergence/re-entry) are seasonally restricted to May to September (optimal May-August), so just be aware that you might need to wait a few months for your survey.

I'm sorry, a what? 😉

It's a unilateral undertaking. As far as I understand it, a council can ask for a self-builder to sign a document saying they will live in the property after it's been built for a minimum amount of time. It's to prevent developers pretending to be self-builders and avoiding the obligations that would ordinarily fall to them. But it can mean issues with selling and mortgages. Sweeping all that away for BNG is a very positive step. I'm pleased because the LPA in our case recognised us as self-builders but we appealed their refusal and the Inspectorate have been pretty unforgiving on those without formal proof of self-build as they will dismiss on the basis that you're a developer and should do the BNG stuff. We in the end waived our self-build status (I didn't think the LPA would sort a UU out in time, given we were appealing their decision), to paid for the BNG calculations and were on the hook for £2500 in credits. Now we don't have to pay any of that, thankfully.

I think this gets adopted via secondary legislation, so no need for Acts or votes etc. Just the department deciding/ SoS signing off. It remains to be seen whether adopted Local Plans will retain their weight if there's a conflict - the NPPF should trump them if they're not aligned. It's pretty epic and marks a big shift. Like that it starts to introduce definitions of 'substantial weight' which will help developers (us!) to fight back against LPAs. And no stress @saveasteading - great minds! 🥰

A major revision to the NPPF landed this week and makes for very interesting reading. Many of the things that have had our project in tangles seem to be getting ironed out - from conservation areas, heritage assets and Non Designated Heritage Assets - (NDHA)s to sustainability and a new set of 'substantial' weights given to a raft of things including design. It's pretty amazing reading. And - in other news - the Biodiversity Net Gains (BNG) for small sites (up to 0.2ha) is being dropped altogether which means no more Unilateral Undertakings (UUs) for self-builders. Keen to hear the takes of the hive mind here. I feel like even if our (overdue!) appeal is dismissed, we have enough here to get planning next time.

We paid: Water: £5,200 - inc road closure £1,300 (Severn Trent) Electricity: £2,000 (Northern Powergrid) Even though it was the same hole in the ground, they didn't manage to organise bc the electricity folks didn't feel the need to close the road so it was all done in a few weeks, but the water company erred on the side of caution, closed the road and it took 13 weeks and an extra £1,300. So if you think they can get away with not closing the road, ask them to put in to the council a tape off permit and see what happens. Our hole was very very close to our property (1m). Tbf to the water people, they very carefully removed the cobbles, put them in their van overnight and then re-laid them to stop them being stolen. Nice but I'd have preferred £1,300 in my pocket still.

We had our start letter on 11 July and the Inspector is visiting this week (😬). I understand they have about a three week turnaround target for getting the decisions out, so assuming no issues, we're expecting ours to be about 3.5 months from start to finish. Full planning permission + National Park + Conservation Area, so pretty tricky. Message your Case Officer if you think they've forgotten you...

We used a TP-Link Tapo SolarCam C402 and paired it with a SECUEYE Solar 4G LTE Modem Router and it works great for us. Cheap and reliable so far. We just bought a Lebara SIM for it for £1/month. Has an app you can use to view.

Ah, that's frustrating. But all seems fixable for next time - no real showstopper, hopefully.