Pete77

Hi - I’m a novice diy’er but will focus my efforts on landscaping, paving etc.... leaving a builder to a kitchen / utility timber frame and glazed extension. My initial question is really, who to turn to first and where to start...! We’ve had an offer accepted subject to planning to buy a narrow slice of land, from the road, along the side of our house, and then right up the side of the house to the back of the rear garden. This enables a dropped kerb to park off-road at the front, then behind it an entrance into the extension which will come off our narrow kitchen. This is currently agricultural land (meadow) and so will need planning for change of use (albeit it’s a tiny part of a very large field). However there are some complications! 1) We’re in a conservation area, and the village boundary line on literally on the side of our house... so any change of use or planning for an extension is slightly outside the boundary by a few metres. 2) We will need permission for the dropped kerb at the front, alongside I guess change of use planning permission for that too 3) There is an electricity substation behind where we’ll park which we’ll need to navigate around which is ok... however to the rear of that where our extension would go is, I understand, a buried electricity power line running off that substation to a rural cottage a couple of fields away. We’d need to re-route this around any extension I guess, but have no idea how easy or costly that would be? 4) We’d likely buy the land even if we couldn’t build on it, just for the parking space and garden extension. But where do we start?! Should we first be speaking to conveyancers, planning consultants, or even go straight to an architect and focus on design first? Any advice MASSIVELY appreciated! Thanks ??