Raine

If anyone is in need of a good ecological surveyor in the area between Birmingham, Cotswolds, Milton Keynes, Oxford, Swindon, Worcestershire & Gloucestershire, PM me. I found a good one.

This is from the doc named "baseline": This is from the doc named "as proposed": I was expecting either one or two TERs (one for 2022 Regs and possibly also one for the Planning requirement of 40% improvement) and one DER. There are two TERs, but the lower figure isn't a 40% improvement on the higher figure, so I don't know what they are. And there are two DERs, and I have no idea why, other than I presume the lower figure is my proposal, as he said it passes. Is it just me, or is this hard / impossible to figure out what's what without being told? I know you all say "forget it and move on", but I'm the type of person who likes to understand things (not every detail, but at least to some extent), and also, I might want to down-spec a bit to save costs in some areas.

All understood, but I need to include the relevant figures in my energy statement, which I can't do if I don't know which is which. Maybe you're right though, and I should stop trying to do it "right" and just cherry-pick the most favourable figures at any point in the design and build process and go with those. In the meantime, I'll look on Google for some beginner's guides to SAP and see what I can find to read in my spare time.

I'm at planning stage. LA planning policy requires new dwellings to "achieve at least a 40% reduction in carbon emissions from a 2013 Building Regulations (or future equivalent legislation *) compliant base case". * I.e. now 2022 regs. I've had my design-stage SAP calcs done but I'm struggling to interpret what I've been sent, and the SAP assessor keeps sending me answers that make no sense to me, so I think I'm fundamentally missing something. I'd be grateful if any of you are able to check and correct my understanding, please: I understand that TER is the figure for a notional regs-compliant building of the same size and type, right? So, as long as I meet or improve on this figure, I comply with the regs, yes? I assume the term "baseline" means the TER?? For the 40% improvement required for planning, I assume I just do TER * 0.6? The SAP assessor has told me which figure is 'the 40% improved figure', but that figure is 65% better than the TER, not 40%, so I can't see how that's right. He replied saying: "The reason we use TER for the baseline is that the baseline assumes a mains gas boiler, in SAP10 you need a lot of solar PV to make the DER compliant which skews the figures. Prior to SAP10 we would have just used the DER from the basline & proposed models as a direct comparison to demonstrate the % reduction. This is not possible in SAP10". I have no idea what he's talking about! Is there an idiot's guide that you can point me towards that will explain this?

Yes, I think that's the same explanation that I read / heard before. The problem with that though is that cavity closers (which need to be a tight fit to prevent cold bridging) seem to be sized to match the insulation batts. So, for a full fill cavity, if I go with 150mm Dritherm or Rockwool Full Fill Cavity Batts, and allow 10mm for insulation expansion, that would be a 160mm cavity, but I can't find any 160mm cavity closers. Plenty at 150mm though. I guess I'll have to spec the cavity at 150mm then, and hope that it doesn't push the blocks out of plumb.

What's the news @Moonshine? Did your 5 boxes arrive yet?

I once read that external brick & block wall cavities need to be 10mm wider than the insulation. I.e. 150mm Dritherm 32 would need a 160mm cavity. I can't find where I read that now. Is that correct, or should I ignore / forget it and go for 150mm cavity?

Yes, fortunately I've already got ahead of that particular potential issue! 😁 Shame the previous owners didn't think to do the same a few decades ago with the massive ash tree that was 2m from the existing extension. 😞

So the only thing I can really do is choose my bat surveyor very carefully. Anyone got any experience / tips in greasing the wheels? That is not really my wheelhouse so I could do with some tips. DM me please!!! What a ridiculous farce it all is!!

I've researched and concluded that beating bat surveys is impossible. What do you guys think? Even the prolific, and very savvy, local high-end housebuilder in my area can't do it. In one of their recent bat surveys, the surveyor saw a single Common Pipistrelle (of which there are 2.5m in UK apparently, so not exactly endangered!) popping in to a gap under a roof tile for half an hour on a summer evening, and then leaving. On that basis, the developer had to do the whole supervised hand demolition thing, and install bat boxes on the new house. If the council requests a Preliminary Roost Assessment (PRA), you may as well just factor-in at least a couple of £k to your build budget, and a lot of delay to your schedule, and get on with it: PRA survey & report (maybe £400?) If you have even a single thumb-sized gap under a roof tile, or a bit of mortar missing in a roof / chimney mortar bed, they will identify that as a potential roost location, and require a summer dawn + dusk emergence survey (with 3 or 4 surveyors watching the house for 2 or 3 hours dawn & dusk) & report (maybe £1000??) If the emergence surveyors see even a single bat popping in for even a couple of minutes, that's a strike, and you have to do the full supervised hand demolition and bat boxes. I can't see how anyone can mitigate against those factors. 😞

Yes, I am unfortunately well aware of the dire stats for apps being determined within 8wks. My last one took 8.5 months. 😞 Really good link though @Alan Ambrose - I will save this for future reference. Thanks!! Both my previous LPA and my current one are showing about 45% apps determined within 8wks, so I'm not holding out much hope! I watched with great interest Gove's speech on this topic in the autumn - I wonder when, if at all, if will start to have an impact?

Got another mail from the planning dept saying that they have "removed the request for the additional fee", so all sorted. That's four days of stress and worry that I could have done without! Now I just have a further 8wks (minimum) of even more stress and worry about whether the app will actually be granted!! 😨

Thanks @BigBub and @DevilDamo - that matches my understanding. It is within the same red line boundary - currently a single plot on the land reg, and will need to demolish part of the existing house to make way for the new one. All being done in one single application. I'll keep trying then. It is made even harder by the fact that the Planning department's phone lines have been having issues for at least the past 3-4 months - most of the time you get a "number not recognised" message when you call, and they don't seem to be able to dial out when WFH either, so the only available comms are calling the council central call centre and getting them to send a message, or email (not very helpful when they don't properly read the email!!). Hopeless!!! 😞

Hi @JKay, Sorry, only just saw this message - notifications don't seem to be working. I ended up pulling out as I discovered there were badgers on the site!!!! Very lucky escape! 😨🦡

Two questions for you all please: 1. Is the local council (England) allowed to set its own fees for planning applications? My understanding is not, and that this is set nationally? 2. Anyone ever heard of the Planning Portal calculating application fees incorrectly, assuming the applicant has ticked the correct boxes? Context I've just submitted a single application including: A single new house (Category 1), applicable fee £578, and Alteration / extension to existing house (Category 6 / 7a), applicable fee £258 In the Planning Portal fee calculator, I ticked the boxes for both of these components, and it calculated the fee at £578 total (plus the portal admin fee), which is what I paid. This seems to align with the gov.uk guidance in the "Fees for mixed development" calculation flowchart, from gov.uk, attached here, in which every combination of mixed-category development ends up with only one of the fees (whichever is highest) being due. That's correct, right? If you read it, is there any way it can be construed that both fees are due? The council declared my application invalid, saying that the fee due is £578 plus £258. I have mailed them twice now with appropriate links and attachments, and they don't even seem to be reading my mails properly. 😞 I will keep trying, but wanted to sanity check with you guys before I take it further. in case I might be wrong?? Planning app fees for mixed development 2014-Oct.pdf