Bramco

Don't think councils can make pre-app advice public as I think it would be against GDPR regs. I've never seen a pre-app advice on an LPA planning site. If you do ask for one and then go for outline or full, then the fact that pre-app advice was sought should be mentioned on the delegated report that goes (or should go) alongside the decision notice. Some of the info from the pre-app advice can then be made public in the report. Simon

@Roundtuit So did you have to show that soakaways wouldn't work based on permeability tests? Or did you simply point out that the site drained into the watercourse anyway. I'm assuming that as you are in Cambridgeshire that the site was pretty flat? It would save us a lot of cash if we didn't have to put soakaways in. Simon

Tell that to Apple and many other electronics suppliers that manipulate prices and always have done... Simon

We were told that we had to use soakaways for surface water even though there is a dyke in front of the property and I seem to recollect that came from the Trent Valley Internal Drainage Board even though they don't manage our dyke, they still have a say into what goes into dykes as they eventually meet up with one of their managed watercourses. Have you spoken to your local Drainage Board because they might have more skin in the game than the EA? Simon

@ToughButterCupIndeed - we read everything we could lay our hands on and worked out that a) they were wrong and b) we'd probably have to go to appeal but we'd try to get them to see sense first - stupid idea...... we should simply have let the application fail and gone straight to appeal! @JohnnytYep - this is where, if anywhere, consistency is applied. LPAs aren't consistent across the country and within LPAs, officers aren't consistent. Anyone wanting chapter and verse on case law on the NPPF should consult -> https://www.amazon.co.uk/Interpreting-NPPF-National-Planning-Framework/dp/1916431526 Excellent book and worth every penny if you want to find the relevant case law. Simon

Wish I'd known about this a few years ago!! Our 1st application was recommended for refusal by the case officer based on the pre-app report written by another officer. The plot is in the Green Belt but in-between a row of houses, so should have been recommended for permission to be granted based on the exception in the green belt for infill in villages. During discussions prior to the application going to committee, we pointed out that at the same time as the pre-app case officer was stating that 30m was too large a gap for the plot to be infill, she recommended granting permission for another application (also for infill in a village in the Green Belt) where the plot width was 100m. Permission was granted We couldn't get our case officer to make any concessions about consistency - he would always state that each application must be examined on its merits and this was repeated ad nauseum in the planning ctte meeting by the chief officer in answer to questions from ctte members about consistency. In the end the ctte was split 6-6 and the chairman voted against granting permission, we reapplied and had the exact same result the 2nd time. The appeal inspector though, essentially told the LPA they were 'WRONG' and permission should have been granted. We used all the various legal decisions about Green Belt and infill in our submission but I wish we'd known about this one as it would have backed up our request for consistency. And now due to that first officer in the pre-app report, we're 3 years down the line, should already have been living in the new house and are now faced with all the escalating costs due to Covid, Brexit etc. as we're only now about to break ground. If only we could make them accountable. Simon

Ok cheers.

So are you saying that you can put the mini consumer unit in the meter box if there is room? Western Power will provide our connection part way to the new house and rather than having the meter box stuck on the side of the house, we were planning to have a freestanding one in the base of a hedge part way up the drive. We'd then needs feeds to the garage and house CUs. We'd need power in the meter box to power an energy monitoring device to drive PV diversion, so I was hoping we could install a large enough meter box that could also house a mini CU. Simon

You need an expert on that - have you tried Gavin Williamson?! ?

Take a look at the naked solar site -> https://nakedsolar.co.uk/storage/ There's a table lower down the page with installed costs as well as cost per kWh - Tesla come out surprisingly competitively priced as well as having better specs. They have a similar pricing table for PV as well. Simon

Take a look at the open energy monitor site -> https://openenergymonitor.org/ You could do this with an emonTH -> https://shop.openenergymonitor.com/emonth-temperature-humidity-node/ and DS18B20 one wire sensors which connects to an emonBase -> https://shop.openenergymonitor.com/emonbase-web-connected-base-station/ if you have a Pi, then you can just buy the RFM69Pi add on board which is cheaper than the base station which is a Pi with the RF card. Not sure how many DS18B20s the s/w in the emonTH supports but there are plenty of instructions on how to reprogram the emonTH to support more sensors. Simon

We have vaulted ceiling and a balcony designed on our master bedroom - but have definitely not gone for triangular windows. These might look great from the outside - but - just take a look around at some that are in your neighbourhood - it's almost impossible to find a good solution to making the room dark at night. You'll see curtains drawn to the side and all sorts of weird stuff...... Simon

https://wiki.ubuntu.com/PulseAudio and https://wiki.ubuntu.com/Audio/Alsamixer seeing as you're a s/w person I use these on a Pi that takes line input from a deck - having said that I haven't the faintest how to really get them working - I just followed some home brew instructions.... Simon

It's better and worse in other countries. Holland is great at proper town planning - we used to live there. Belgium is weird, you can do a lot without permission but on some sites you must leave the sides of your house blank (no windows) in case someone wants to build alongside you, if you look, you'll see these houses with nothing either side but they have blank walls.... Odd Simon

I should add, we've done 2 requests for pre-application advice. The first officer got it wrong and we had to go to appeal and they completely dissed the LPA as not knowing what they were doing. And the officer came to different conclusions about infill in the Green Belt on ours and another application at the same time in a different village. For ours, 32m frontage was too large to be infill (there's no size regulation of course). For the other a frontage of 100m was fine.... Their application was fronted by a local architect, ours was from us - go figure. The 2nd was on the actual application after we'd won the appeal. They'd brought in a contractor and she really screwed us over, it's too tall, it's too deep, couldn't you flip it side to side, which caused many iterations of the plan and resulted in something sub optimal in terms of space.... and on top of that, the original outline application and appeal are invalid because they don't show the red line all the way to the public highway!!!!!! In the end we thought screw this pre-app business for a lark, put in the application and it was granted permission - I wonder if we'd just not wasted the money and 6 months of time on the pre-app if we'd have got what we really wanted by just submitting the plans we wanted. And through all these pre-apps, the best we got were curt emails with their decisions about our plans - absolutely NO discussion. Simon

Yes it's in the NPPF - although it's not exactly in the form of LPA's shall.... Amusingly the decision making section starts off: 38. Local planning authorities should approach decisions on proposed development in a positive and creative way..... It then continues under the heading 'Pre-application engagement and front-loading' 39. Early engagement has significant potential to improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the planning application system for all parties. Good quality preapplication discussion enables better coordination between public and private resources and improved outcomes for the community. You might like to send a copy of that to your local councillor and the leader of the council and ask the questions you've posed here. You can read the rest of the decision making section of the NPPF at https://bit.ly/3vN0Pjt Simon

Off topic but not true - we have 3 semis in our village and a city flat. They all turn a decent profit and they are all well maintained with all the relevant certificates, gas, electric etc. It's still a great way to invest for the future/pension. The recent rise in values is also nice ? Simon

Fan!!!! in a soil pipe - yikes......

As I understand it that's 'earth' to you and me. The plot was allotments at the time of the war and since the sixties has had an occasional pony on it and few 'lawn mower' sheep borrowed from a local famer - who used to thank my father in law with some of the proceeds - a lamb, once a year. We're sort of in the hands of our timber frame people who are contracted to do the insulated slab - the bit at issue is the bit we have to do under that. We're expecting their foundation engineer to send through the plans any day now based on the SE's input on line and point loads. I've sent them the info on Tenax and Tensor - will be interesting to see if they poo poo it, or hopefully can reduce the depth of we have to excavate, get rid of and fill with hardcore. Simon Note to self, must update the thread once we've got a final plan....

Fortunately we're about 30m from the nearest trees. One thing less to worry about! Simon

@IanR and @ToughButterCup thanks for the links. More research!! ?

Interestingly spoke to a technical guy at Geosynthetics and they reckon the Tenax grid can reduce the amount of hardcore depth needed by 30% to 50% which could be quite useful for us. And my brother in law who trained as a carpenter and then started building extensions etc. said the first foundations he had to do, he thought he had to take down to 3ft. About halfway down he hit bedrock and kangoed it out to 3ft!! He didn't do that again after BC pointed out that bedrock was solid enough. Simon

Hi, Our foundations are being designed by the timber frame co. Currently they are stipulating that we excavate between 900 and 1200mm below the level of the insulated slab that they will be installing and that we should remove and fill any soft spots when the excavation is down to the right level. The soil survey shows about 0.5m of firm made ground above 0.3m of firm brown clay (90KPa - so above the 70KPa advice on foundations). Below that it's firm, red brown silty clay down to mudstone at 3m or so. The issue is that at 1m the clay is 65KPa and at 1.3m 60KPa, so it goes from firm at the top, to soft lower down before getting firmer until the mudstone at 3m. Instead of excavating to nearly 1.5 m below ffl, would a system like the Geosynthetics Elotex geotextile and Tenax grid mean we could reduce the amount of excavation. Has anyone used a system like this to improve the soil bearing capacity of their foundations? Simon

All the resin drives installed round our way have been replaced under warranty or removed. The issue apparently is with the gravel used. If there's a hint of iron in the stone, then it rusts and expands making the whole thing bubble. And imprinted concrete in freezing weather is slippier than a sheet of ice!! Simon

It does beg the question - why on earth didn't they build the party wall right back to the house wall? What's there that caused them to go within a couple of feet? Is there a fire wall in that space between your lean to and their extension? Simon