Ferdinand

In MK you could remove 4762 trees and no one could tell the difference... @JSHarris Hope I am not nitpicking, but how did they buy land which wasn't owned by anyone? Who was the counterparty? Was the enforcement just a scam?

That roof batten looks pricey. Does itwhat type is it? My current price for 25x50 in the posh coloured versions are 48p plus VAT per m run, 38p for the general purpose. It will only probably save £15-20 mind, if that. Ferdinand

Check it carefully. Our sale was delayed by a couple of months because the purchaser's solicitor refused to believe that we had a right to drive over our verge, despite having been there and doing it for 35+ years. The problem lay with the lane having been realigned by a few m away from the house in 196x to accommodate the M1 build and the MoT taking certain powers and potentially retaining certain rights, and providing documentary proof 4x years later. Eventually they accepted that we had the right by long use. F

I would strongly recommend deciding what you will be doing with trees, and *implementing* it before you apply for PP, but after you have dealt with potential show stoppers around drainage etc. If you have a TO who is getting hung up on technical definitions of hedgerow bushes the size of a finger, then you need to limit their scope pronto by removing some things. AIUI these tiny trees only come into play when dealing with woodland TPOs as one particular judge made some peculiar decisions about tiny saplings being an essential part of the wood's future and therefore must all be controlled by the LPA. It is not clear whether the owners of consuming goats or sheep or beetles should be prosecuted. The rules may have changed, and I could be mistaken. A hedge with 3 or 4 larger trees is probably going to be a better quality long term hedge than something much higher, both from ease of maintenance and growing things next to it points of view. You want some sun to get through it imo; this is not Mirkwood. For hawthorn I would say get it traditionally laid, but telling the layers what height of hedge you want for the hedge itself, and leaving a few small trees for birds and the white/pink blossom. What colour do they flower? See if the hedge layer will adopt you as a oppo for a day or two; it is a fantastic skill to appreciate. Ferdinand

I would modify that slightly to be "as much information as you think you will *need* to provide to let the Council make their decision". It will say "built in accordance with drawings x, y and z, reports p, q, r and s, and conditions on the decision notice". It is up to you what is on drawings x, y and z and partly in reports p through s depending how you brief your advisers. There are tradeoffs. If it is not in your PP your Council cannot hold you to it - eg someone here had trouble when the manufacturer changed the design of the front door from the one shown on the elevation to their new design, and the Council planner chose to pick at that particular nit. Or if something marginal (eg specification of expensive landscape feature) *is* in the PP you are likely to be able to be able to include it in the part of your expenditure for which VAT can be reclaimed. They cannot be disturbed by things they do not know, and it is ambiguous what you have to tell them in many areas. The house I am living in at present squeaks up to the boundaries on both sides. Examining the plans I cannot see boundaries clearly indicated. On one side there is only an unlabelled line which appears to be the far side of next-door's drive. Was he misdirecting the Council? But it is all a judgement call and situation dependent, and you are wearing the wig and gown. Best of skill and best of luck . Ferdinand

Welcome. Site levels is not a thing I would skimp on -- since it is the foundation of everything else anda survey is not really very expensive, at perhaps £400-£700. In your case I would have a survey done of the whole thing, including the existing, relevant points on the road etc, since that will hardly cost any more and you will need to know how your drainage trenches etc relate to the existing garden. You want to get a copy of the full digital model so you can give it to all your other professionals, and to make sure there is no restriction on your use of your model. Surely we are now also at the point where such models can be 3d-printed ecoomically? Has anyone done this? Ferdinand

Welcome, but probably one of our Skye or H+I self-builders will be best placed to answer this questions.

If I were going for a cabinet or traditional larder (ie relying on chunky walls), I think I would want it outside the thermal envelope, possibly as part of a 'porch' or 'utility' area covering the back door, and also use the space as a bike store, possibly a cool room for shaggy dogs, wine store etc. Another example of how it all needs to be thought about in advance. Ferdinand

Personally I like the invisible cat . Do you know how I can turn mine into one? Welcome.

I always meet the pet first in its own previous home (which gives an opportunity to inspect the home and owner discreetly), then usually set it up such that the dog tenant is responsible for the decorating - so if the hound eats the wallpaper there is no pained conversation about replacement costs. If a T stays for 5 years, the Deposit Schemes have depreciated items such as carpets and decorating to a notional zero anyway for the purpose of arbitration so you won't get anything back for those items anyway even if you went full bureaucrat on the tenant. Ferdinand

@Archer If you get your insulation from say Seconds and Co (they get the Kingspan not quite perfect stuff), then you could get it well below half price (I recently paid approx £10 a sheet for a pallet of 50mm PIR 8x4s, delivered) - so the extra materials will cost you the same as the half-amount via a normal channel. I bought a shed to store it and the rest in which I will reuse elsewhere later. You just need somewhere to store it, and to watch the site for the correct stuff. Can save thousands if you do it with other materials too. F

Welcome. Do not underestimate how long this could take :-) .

@Andrew 1 - Go beyond the PDFs. Ask for a copy of the CAD data files and raw data files themselves as well as the PDF so you can give them to your architect / designer to load straight in. 2 - Consider whether you want the survey to be restricted to your personal use only, or whether you want the right to "Assign" it to a third party eg if you have to to sell - they may include that anyway, may add a small charge for that right, or may identify a reasonable price should you need to do that later (eg £25 admin fee). If you do not discuss, the fee might be £100 or £200 when you are over a barrel asking for a favour later. 3 - Make sure that they go far enough into the surroundings for anything you will need for your project .. eg the highway boundary, kerb lines, lane boundaries, and street furniture for your entrance design / splays. Ferdinand

@DundeeDancer Are you a hoary old landlord-developer with all the scars, or fairly new to this with only a few years and properties? I think my most useful comment would be that while tenants and purchasers will look at bling and finish when they move in, the place not to skimp is the stuff that means your tenants will stay for 6 years not one-and-a-half, and love living in your flat, since those extra 3 tenant changes could cost you the equivalent of six months rent. If you run the numbers a 5% higher rent takes 2 years to recover the loss of one month of rent if you have a one month longer void - without all the tenant swap costs. Even a 10-15% higher rent will take ages to cover all those. I would argue for not skimping on, for example, sound insulation, ventilation, energy efficiency, very bottom of range appliances, letting the first T choose the carpet colour, perhaps allowing pets (dog tenants stay longer) Mira shower, walk in shower not a telephone box type, and so on. It is very easy to get the things right that make a tenant move in, but avoiding the things that make a tenant move out is equally important. As one example, I have just had a T move into one of mine whose previous 3 bed end terrace was running energy bills of £200 per month. In my semi of the same age they will be saving about £120 a month, as they should come in for £750-1000 per year - not itself very good but reasonably OK and very comfortable. All depends on your market, mind, Ferdinand

As long as you have experience of project managing and ideally purchasing, you have a head start, Just make sure to reflect on how the skills transfer. 2-5% is the sort of reduction you might get to let them get the job ... but you risk that they may cut small corners to maintain the margin. It is far more robust to find ways to reduce *their* costs, as they can pass that through with no loss of margin. That comes down to things like cutting out waiting time, or finding bits of the project that are not necessary, you sourcing materials at 30% cheaper than they can, choosing other items which are as good but less expensive. All of that kind of "sweat the detail" stuff. If you save them a man-day of work it should be worth £100-200 to you. But if you are on a firm price contract you will have to agree terms up front so it is more challenging. The categories i tend to think in are saving money, risk and time for me or them. And there are tradeoffs. Ferdinand

Welcome to the site. All questions are good ones, especially the ones that other people are too embarrassed to ask.

One other thing to bear in mind is that if they are genuinely minor and do not impact others, and if you are not in a designated area - conservation area, national park etc, then the worst that is likely to happen enforcement wise will be a retrospective application ... which means that you get to keep your minor changes and there is a possibility of having to fill in a form later. Unless there is something that will make a neighbour get narked because you are impacting on them, or you are going over a redline which will challenge the authority of the LPA or are embarrassing them, then you are very likely to be OK. If your Planner visits you may be put on the spot. How likely is the Planner to visit after approval? What was it Ecclesiastes said? "There is no end to the filling in of forms, and too much paperwork will wear you out".(Ch 12:v11, paraphrased-ish.) Judgement call for you. Unless there is an elephant trap somewhere, I would expect to get away with it. You may find yourself having to get a retrospective Certificate of Lawfulness or Indemnity Policy when you sell it. (Obviously that is just my opinion not advice). Ferdinand

@hmpmarketing There's a good @JSHarris piece about this somewhere. It may, for example, help to explain that because your walls are all 20" thick there is less internal space, so it is actually less valuable than he thinks and even though it is the size of a bus garage you are actually living in the space of a telephone box. Or it may not .

If what you want to build is in accordance with what is in your Approved Plans, then it is not an amendment :-). Hopefully your non-specific window size doesn't mismatch with your new intention. They will be more exacting if it is on public view when finished.

I was also thinking that you could play a mental game of offsetting it against the 10k+ you saved on that use of SPONS to catch an overpriced quote. So you may actually be in a better position than you would have been without SPONS and no builder problems. That may or may not help. When I bought the wrong sort of insulation, and then had to buy a new shed to store it in, I felt it helped slightly that it was less than I had saved at Wickes on 3 for 2s etc. So I saved less money but got a free shed :-). Ferdinand

That is an excellent point. The one more project stage before fixing an issue costs an order of magnitude more continues all the way through ... even for 10 years after moving in. @recoveringacademic you are doing this the correct way. Ferdinand

Cheers. Useful information.

How long has that been there? I might go for something like 50x150 concrete edgings if I were being functional not decorative. I am a huge fan of the 1950s bullnose version, of which I seem to get oodles every time I renovate a house. F

Aiui that relates to the category of 'promotion' which can be broad, but there is also perhaps a time limit over publication. Though in the past in English defamation law each time a page is loaded has been considered as a new act of publication. OT: I have sometimes considered using it as a tool to deal with fake claims on 'facts' or FAQ pages by single issue campaigns, but never got around to it. They receive a huge number of complaints .. hundreds a week. If Durisol cooperate as they seem to have done, a request for a correction or a change of wording might be as effective in updating the website. Ferdinand

@Archer Remember the eternal money vs risk vs time pendulum. Just a small red flag .. Using a BN is fine but increases the risk of you getting poleaxed by circumstances or mistakes. You are are the one responsible so while you will save on your cash budget you will need to spend more on your time budget to keep the risks down by sweating the detail. I would suggest mentally increasing the time contingency and take a policy decision deliberately to resist the temptation to rush whenever it happens. Unless I suppose you shift the responsibility to the builder, who will then want more of your money to compensate him for the time he has to put in to manage the extra risk. I found a couple of nice cartoons. F