Omnibuswoman

Inspiring stuff! We are at the beginning hoping to be able to move in by the end of this year. I’m being careful not to say “we’ll be in by Christmas” but am secretly hoping we will. Also feeling the shock of rapidly skyrocketing prices. Well done on digging deep and pushing forwards!

Hi there. Welcome to Buildhub. Have you had any particular issues with architects? What sort of house do you have planned? m

We have washed one of the ply panels with a strong bleach solution and it did clean it up a bit. But we have left the rest for now as we had other more pressing tasks to get done. Once the workshop is complete we will wash all of the walls with bleach (we dissolved lots of tesco bleach tablets in water to make a strong solution) then will paint with anti mould paint.

I haven’t yet tried this, no, but will be down there in a fortnight so will give the experiment a go.

Excellent progress, congrats on getting the ground floor done! Very impressive stuff. Loving Mrs BotusBuild’s hardhat!

Absolutely thrilled to say our S73 PP was granted this morning, bang on time, with no new conditions. What a fantastic Xmas pressie ☺️☺️☺️

@tonyshouse @markc @joe90 thank you all so much for your advice on this. Just wanted to update that this was successful and not too difficult. I’ve uploaded a couple of pics which are not that fascinating but a testament to the excellent advice you all gave me. Thank you! m

Don't worry Tea, once we have moved to Cornwall, I'm sure the local grapevine will eventually bring all salacious gossip your way!! ?

Anyway, good news. The council are going to remove the offensive comments.

these things are quite primeval - I think it’s the human equivalent of a cat spraying on its territory.

That's a shame. It sounds as though everyone has lost out really. I can't see that he has been through the MPTS at all. The CCG applied to stop him from being one of their GPs rather than going through the fitness to practice route, so he should be still able to practice outside of West Kent CCG area.

I'll see if I can find what the GMC did with him....

+1 Some of the doctors I work with tell me that they 'couldn't do [my] job' and don't understand how it doesn't get to me (complaints investigations). I can sincerely say that the converse is also true. I could not see patients all day that I thought were being foolish, or unreasonable, or obtuse, and not say something very direct about what I thought. I don't know how more of them don't get into this sort of trouble!!

The average age in the village is considerably above ours, so I have had the same thought. We’ve potentially another 40-50 years to enjoy there, long after the naysayers are pushing up the daisies. It also occurred to me that with the population being as aged as they are, memories are likely to be short! ? Seriously though, I’ve asked the council to remove offensive stuff, but you may be right about the risk of legal letters inflaming tensions. Whilst I anticipate the closest neighbour continuing her campaign (she has already reported us to the police for “crimes against bats” and to the council for breach of the TPO because our warning poster on the heras fencing got wet and became unreadable), the others are not direct neighbours of ours and will in all likelihood simply accept the build as inevitable once the permission has been granted.

Spoken like a true foreigner ??

I've seen on the local facebook community pages people having pissing contests about how 'local' they are, and how many generations back they can trace their roots etc. Honestly, it is farcical. When our particularly hateful neighbour first met us, she turned to my mum and asked 'and where are you from?'. My mum's reply, naming a Devon hamlet three miles away, won the response 'Oh!' and a disappointed face. I think the neighbour had wanted to have a go about 'foreigners' which is the local term for anyone not born in the county. Sigh! The profound irony of the unpleasant gossip is that the elderly gentleman we have been accused of mistreating had actually telephoned me to agree our boundary hedge proposal, and in that conversation offered me the benefit of his wisdom about how to settle into a village like this when moving from elsewhere, as he had a couple of decades ago.

You're not wrong about negative feelings towards 'up country' people. It's peculiarly strong in the Cornish it seems... The principle in law is that the council would be liable because they are the publisher of the defamatory comments - the comments are reviewed by the council before being added to the application page. The law concerning social media sites is a little bit different because people effectively self-publish, and the social media company can only react after the fact. Internet providers have also been sued for hosting libellous comments, but without success to date.

Thanks @AliG. You are absolutely right that these represent malicious gossip, and likely stemming from one particular individual with whom we have already had some problems, whose purpose in life seems to be sh*t stirring in general. And I agree with you that there are no meaningful planning issues here - we don't overlook anybody, and issues about traffic are irrelevant to the changes we have applied to make. I met the planning officer when he visited the site and he seemed immensely sensible, so I've no concerns that he will turn down the application - even the balcony isn't especially contentious as the house in front of us, the fancy one, has a balcony (as there are lovely views to enjoy). However, in a small village, and without being there to counter these allegations (especially the one about the elderly neighbour and the hedge), I'm concerned that the well will be poisoned in advance of our moving there and it will be difficult to build relationships in the local community. I grew up in a village, and I know how powerful local gossip can be (hence moving to a major city as soon as I left school - ahh the anonymity was glorious!!). Despite what was said on one of the comments, it is actually going to be our forever home and we want to feel welcome there. The origins of this started during lockdown when we couldn't be there for months and months. In our absence we had several quite nasty emails from people who had somehow obtained my email address (probably from the unpleasant neighbour), making allegations about us that were clearly local gossip. We were really upset, and when we were able to return after lockdown lifted we felt very uncomfortable there for quite a while. That eased off eventually as we were back a lot over this summer building the workshop, but these planning comments repeat some of those allegations and add a few extra ones. It is really difficult not to imagine this becoming a more malicious gossip again unless we nip it in the bud by sending some legal letters threatening those involved with libel, and asking them to retract their defamatory comments. Ultimately, people will say what they want to - we are not naive about that. But leaving this sort of thing unchallenged feels wrong, and if nothing else our threats will give them something to gossip about. I'm not for a minute thinking that any of this will end up being heard in court - the idea is to send strongly worded letters asking for the comments to be retracted, and for a statement of apology to be made public instead. I've already emailed the planning officer to point out the council's duty not to publish defamatory comments, so hopefully that will result in some of them being removed early next week. Watch this space...

Has anyone any experience of having had defamatory comments about them (made on their planning application public comments section) removed by the Council? I reviewed our simple S73 application last night, and found 8 new comments made by members of the public, many of which contained wholly untrue malicious gossip about us. I am astonished that the council did not do a better job of vetting what was published. Has anyone else had personal comments made when commenting on planning applications? How did you handle them? Thanks

We’re in the very fortunate position of having our whole budget available which should be enough for everything, if we are careful and keep a close eye on costs. But I have been very concerned about doing a timber frame in such a wet county, in the winter. If we weren’t relying on Dan the Builder to do all of it for us I would be looking very closely at pre-fabricated systems like MBC etc. Having said that, at the rate things are going, winter will be nearly over by the time it starts going up. I’m still dallying about organizing the trench for water and telecoms ?. I’ve put it on the too difficult pile.

Thanks @Russell griffiths and @keith65. Our builder is passive house trained on the Plymouth Uni course with Peter Warm and his daughter Sally, so he does know what we’re trying to achieve. (I agree with you about the general standard being woeful.) It was just an unexpected surprise when we met with him and the SE a few weeks ago and both put forward clay blocks as an option. We had never heard of them before. I’m yet to be convinced that it’s better than a stick built timber frame. We prefer the method with the least amount of carbon possible, and the least amount of concrete. I’ve been in touch with MBC to get a quote. The total for foundation plus frame was about half of our budget, which made me a bit nervous when considering all of the remaining things that would need to be covered. I’ve heard that stick builds are cheaper, although there’s a lot of uncertainty around costs with prices being so volatile and inflation rising… ?

Thanks @AliG As we were not planning on a brickwork construction in the first place (our first preference was timber frame) I'm not sure that there are any real benefits to this system that make it worth the downsides. The builder, Dan, proposed single skin build with render inside and out to get the airtightness we want (we are going for a passivhaus), but I am concerned about the lack of cavity in which to run services etc. The only upside might be that these might be more suitable for a winter build, but the way things are going, it will already be nearly spring by the time our foundation is down, so it becomes a moot point!

Yes we do have plenty of room on the plot to store materials, so that's a good idea. I know that the local timber yard have a minature lorry that their amazing driver was able to get up the drive with some 5m lengths of timber for us. I did think it would be sensible to order as much of our materials from there as possible if they can get it all the way into the plot. The builder is currently building his own extension in wide clay block, which I think is partly why he has suggested it for us as well. I've heard such mixed things about them, so I'm very uncertain indeed. I don't like the idea of having to chase all of the cables into the walls. And I understand that the render inside and out takes a long time to dry.

We have a DPM and radon barrier underneath the concrete slab which laps up and under the blocks around the edges, although where it ends and at the corners is a bit messy and I'm not wholly sure what we should do with that. But for the most part i think it's ok.

brilliant! Thanks so much. We have plenty of timber, and no ceiling on as yet, so will have no problem doing this.