miike

The CIL exemption seems to cover residential annexes. I don't think it would be unusual for a 3000sf house to have a 750 sf annex/guest house on the site with all facilities and that seems to be covered by the CIL exemption. So is there any law stopping someone building a 3000sf annex/guest house for their 12000 sf house and receiving the CIL exemption for both? It would be proportional to the above example.

This is just out of curiosity after seeing an estate that's been divided and put up for sale. If you were doing a self-build for a large country estate, and you wanted to build a staff/guest house on the site as well, would this be included in the CIL exemption? What would happen if in the future (after 3 years) this guest house was split from the primary plot and sold as an individual house?

Has anyone gone longer than this waiting for their case officer to give their report? I'm now on month 15 and on my third case officer, with the other two having both quit before issuing their decision. I was told by this current case officer in November that they're recommending it for approval, but as of yet I still haven't got the report. They also found that a councillor called it in to committee if its recommended for approval, so it won't end at the officers report! All three of my officers have had different opinions - 1st was going to refuse, 2nd said they'd approve with alterations and the current likes it as is. So at least that's improved with each subsequent delay! The planning app is just for a redesign of the currently approved house on the plot, so nothing overly complicated.

More info just got published today - https://www.gov.uk/government/news/over-150-million-funding-to-kickstart-self-building-revolution

Amex business platinum is doing 100,000 points for signing up at the moment. About as good as it gets, presume they're doing everything they can to attract people when the main perk (travel) isn't of much use currently. I can give a friends referral for an extra 5000 if you want to sign up.

Fully intend to appeal and confident I'd win given how weak their objection is and easily disprovable it is. Just annoying what a waste of time it's going to be.

Just to update this, the council have said they don't have a problem with the design in itself but they refuse to allow a modern house on this plot because it's a 'traditional setting'. They've said no additional plans or discussion will change their mind on this point so they are going to recommend refusal. They're contradicting the local design guidelines for the area (which specifically describe the area as a 'mix' of different styles and say that modern architecture 'adds interest and intrigue' to the street scene) so it'll be going straight to appeal but it's an additional 6+ months of waiting for a decision now. Very frustrating.

I'm also curious about this and whether letters of support in general carry any weight. If only letters with 'material' objections weigh against an application, is there a similar standard for what would qualify a letter of support to weigh in favour?

I think this is exactly what has happened, early objectors had their 6+ page Magnum Opus submitted with a lot to write but little to say, the latest ones are pretty half hearted. Fortunately, the neighbours have been rallied around points that aren't material issues. They've all focussed on the 'not in keeping with the local area', but our areas design policy specifically allows for high quality contemporary design.

I can deal with a committee so not the end of the world if it comes to that!

During the pp process for your house, how many neighbours objections did you receive? I applied for pp for a contemporary style house in a fairly densely populated part of town and one of the neighbours rallied the locals to put in objections which mostly came through on the last day (about 20 in total). There were about 10 in support to contrast. Objections were mainly about a contemporary house being out of keeping with the area, a lot of what could be referred to as 'rants' rather than material objections. There were no objections from technical consultees. Do weak objections carry more weight when there are multiple people stating it?

Details of the scheme are here - https://www.gov.uk/government/news/10-billion-package-to-build-more-homes-and-level-up-communities ’The fund will support up to 660,000 jobs and unlock up to 860,000 homes.  This includes funding for: a new ‘Help to Build’ equity loan scheme for people who want to build their own homes, providing access to low deposit mortgages’ Another write up about it here - https://www.granddesignsmagazine.com/self-builds/890-help-to-build-scheme

The government announced a few months ago that they would be introducing a new ‘help to build’ scheme similar to the ‘help to buy’ equity loan scheme. Has anyone heard anything more about this or details about how it might be structured? If it works the same as the ‘help to buy’ equity scheme then it would be a terrible deal for self-builders (as most self-builders see a ~30% profit on their build so the equity loan would essentially have a ~30% interest rate in the first year) so I’m hoping it’s not quite the same.