miike

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.