Ferdinand

There are. If you wish you can drill a 25mm hold in the EPS and fill it with expanding foam, which is tougher than EPS, then screw your plastic screw into that. Chatter here: http://www.greenbuildingforum.co.uk/newforum/comments.php?DiscussionID=8514

Also the 100% funding (if so) is unusual. Here ECO was 2/3 of the first 6k iirc. Good luck to them, however. Ferdinand

Various means. eg long screws into plastic sockets. Ferdinand

I thought that if you renovated whole thermal elements then it has to meet building regs(?) eg https://ewistore.co.uk/does-external-wall-insulation-comply-with-building-regulations/

Looks like interesting circumstances. Target to be met by end of Financial Year? Does 80mm EPS on a solid wall meet building regs? If not, presumably somebody is turning a blind eye. When I have had detailed quotes, the supplier would build out all utility gubbins, but not satellite dish type things and posts which touched the ground. These would be down to me. Ferdinand

On a technical point - can planning conditions like this one actually be enforced against before the project is complete? Ferdinand

@Trw144 They don't usually make things be undone unless there is a real real real problem, so really this now comes down to your judgement call. I see very little point in going for 2ft or 5ft rather than 1ft bare root plants for horticultural reasons. Look after them well and they will be at 2ft or 5ft in a very short period of time anyway. Precedent sometimes exists and sometimes doesn't and it can be very much on a whim and dependent on circumstances. If they enforce you will be able to tie them up for months in bureaucracy if you wish. But if the complainant turns out to be a barnacle you may keep being approached. Do you feel lucky?

You probably need your hedge in by the end of March at the very latest, then it wants flood watering twice a week through the summer until autumn rains. Makes a huge difference. For native hedging plants try the RHS website or your commercial nursery. That is probably a small issue once they are in unless you try bananas or pomegranate or similar. I am not convinced that anyone ... including an enforcement officer ... trying to argue that a hedge is unacceptable because it has not grown enough has a leg to stand on; practice recognises that hedges and trees grow and take time and develop iirc a bit like cats or peacocks but not like dogs, which is also why you are not usually responsible for your tree demolishing next door's Porsche until it is proven that you know the tree has problems. It may be different if you are Planning Conditioned for initial hedge height, which would be nuts. Surely we do not have many of that sort of Little Hitler even in 2016? The complainants are burbling away about dots and tittles, and full stops that are allegedly upside down. I think that this may be a smaller problem than seems; really the problem is about the complainant treating your project like a toothache. I am not sure how you close it down in your circs, however. But my stance would say once I have decided my position, I would do it and tell them all to put up or shut up. Ferdinand

What are the requirements re your Heras fencing and rules as to where it goes? Can you just put that back along the boundary? Or put in a 1.2m post and rail with sheep netting stapled to it on the boundary? Wpuld be very quick to do and cheap. Does that affect Adjacent? Or you could just ignore them and aapeal the enforcement, which would give you time.

For an extreme case you can look at the recent Fracking controversy in Cumbria, there was a major national campaign of objections. Ferdinand

Since the Council are entirely and dedicatedly objective and fair minded it will make no difference anyway :-). Or .. what may happen is that T will not pass on notification to LL, so LL will not hear of it - depending on locality / dedication of LL. If you want to dialogue with LL, you can probably get it from the Contact on the Land Registry record for £3, or by asking the tenant. My recommendation would be not to try to go too far beyond the rules with a LL neighbour who may not be aware, or they may suddenly notice at an inconvenient moment and go ape. And some LLs have the capital and property / legal knowledge to make things difficult. If you are confident that your build is fine, then I think it may be a case to deliberately make the LL aware of your Application. Ferdinand

For some reason I get a "Door of the Week" offer from Mansfield Howdens, presumably I signed up it in a fit of inattention. Normally it is Landlord Specials, however this week it is Worcester Oak Doors in all Imperial Sizes for £89.95 + VAT, which may be of interest to some people. These are the doors: https://www.howdens.com/doors-joinery-collection/internal-doors/internal-hardwood-doors/worcester-oak-door/ This is the phone number: 01623 629631. TRADE ONLY, obviously, but a plan to actually buy something may help. No idea if this is other branches, or actually how competitive the price is but Howdens are usually OK. If you visit them on Tuesday morning 8-10 you get a free bacon cob, or decent coffee at other times. But no cocktails. Ferdinand

You do not know that they exist until they blow up the Bakewell Pudding Shop. The ones I worry about are the people from Stilton, who by dint of living in the wrong County are not allowed (quite properly) to make Stilton Cheese. Who knows what they might do if they get frustrated ... night raid on the Hartington Cheese Shop if it still exists? Provincial problems...

Hmmm. Off the wall, maybe but,,, Can you do anything with outside groundworks and eg trenches or hahas? Does ground sound transmit through a deep moat or a Leca or tyre-shreddings filled French Drain on that side around the foundations, or on the boundary? Depends on the sound path. I don't know the answer. Summary that focuses on above ground things in the garden. https://www.fhwa.dot.gov/environment/noise/noise_compatible_planning/federal_approach/audible_landscape/al04.cfm Ferdinand

The answer to that has to be because as a country we have decided it is the desirable thing to do, and we want low energy usage in our economy but people to live in pleasant, warm, desirable houses, and so we adjust the balance of desirables. And that we cannot guarantee cheap energy for the next 100 years continuously. You could apply the same argument to the last 4 lots of Building Regs improvements and we would still all be thinking about whether it was worth putting in 50mm of rockwool in our lofts. In the comparison you cite I hope that X House would be significantly more valuable than Y house. I would like to see some extra Stamp Duty and Council Tax on Y House, and perhaps a small surcharge on any mortgage. I don't believe in big governmet, but would not have a problem with this. Most people do not have a problem with Building Regs and Safety Calculations. Ferdinand

I would slightly differ from Jeremy in that I would fill a stud wall with rockwool if not able to isolate the faces. I did that with a couple of treatment rooms in the gym I have been talking about, and it seems OK. It does however depend on the nature of the noise as we all know. We needed to isolate from gym music and talking. If you have the guys, then perhaps go with the blockwork. Can you choose different types of block for different types of noise? I suspect that nothing will isolate you from the ground-propagated noise, short of a modest earthquake-style solution. For the gym the best solution to keep the floor below isolated from dropping heavy weights was concrete platforms mounted on tuned dampers, which was almost a recording studio style isolation. Ferdinands

Ah yes. But I might be laundering money for the Taddington Liberation Front. Dodgy people in Taddington; they put their traditional wells on top of the nearest hill. Who does that? I don't have a problem with them checking, provided it is necessary and works. I did have *huge* problems with security theatre, such as the half million 'terrorists' (ie members of the public) who were randomly searched by the Met per year a decade ago in London. And they never caught anyone afaik. I had a straightfaced policeman tell me that self + girlf were terrorist suspects when we spent 15 seconds looking at a map on the wall of St Pancras station, and proceeded to do a personal search. Ferdinand

On the same bungalow I have a rather creative pitch from the solicitor for £22 for Chancel Repair Insurance (since it is unregistered). Fortunately there are at least 50 identical bungalows on the one small 1970s development, so any possible liability will be shared many ways. And the church is very well maintained (they even built their own Baptistry in the 1990s). So no chance there methinks.

What is the best answer to Estate Agent and Solicitors' "where did the money come from" questions? I mistakenly said "a previous sale", which means i now have to go on a Certificate Hunt for the relevant letter amongst my filing. Bah. Could just as easily have said "savings", since the money has been there for some time. Breeding iriot Ferdinand. Any good suggestions for wording? Ferdinand

Ye-es. Sort of. But it has to be marginal changes that can be achieved rather than revolutions. Various climate-change wotsits and energy intervention gewgaws have destroyed our aluminium industry. 3 billion turnover nearly gone at a time when our vehicle industry has expanded significantly. There may be some disagreement on this one, and the industry was something of a "Linwood", but green measures were an important cause. Political interventions are *crude*, and *big* *huge* interventions are trumpeted as beneficial, while really that is a jump from one position of overegged ignorance to another, so that politicians can placate their base and demonstrate the huge swinging size of their political penises. Perhaps political party members need to stop being impressed by penis size, for one thing. Higher energy prices will never be accepted for themselves. When Ken Clarke put VAT on fuel to get money in the early 1990s after Norman Lamont who made the original proposal was defeneestrated from his bathroom window for singing while the pound burned, it only lasted until 1997 until Gordon Brown reduced the rate. Lab 1997 Manifesto: That will always happen. Ramp up prices too much; poor people can't afford it; political pressure will turn the clock back or introduce a measure to mitigate which puts costs on the other side and undermines the aim. So increasing prices alone is too crude. People who are 'victims' are enough so that no such measure will work. (One counterfactual is that that "90bn subsidy to business every year. Oooer Missus!" report from the Political Economists at Sheffield University two years (?) ago alleged that the low rate of VAT was a subsidy for business.) The same thing happens with huge subsidies. When we had 44p/kWh solar subsidies we ended up with solar subsidy-farmers just as we did with food subsidy-farmers under the C.A.P. Then when the subsidy was reduced because solar power was cheaper, the Greens and some mainstream politicians (eg Lisa Nandy) went to market squealing about "attacks on environmental measures", when in reality it meant a reduced amount of subsidy per unit meant that more green measures could be subsidised with the same money. Problems there: the originators didn't think it though, and Greens are a fringe enough party that they don't understand the power / efficiency of markets to deliver benefit. See also the Arlene Foster fandango - a new dance involving holding a cover over your backside while singing La La La Boom Di-Eh. It has to be set up to deliver a wide benefit via relatively small change imo. I agree with a lot of that. It is the old thing about people buying or renting property on bathrooms and kitchens, not energy bills, and the latter therefore not being visible in the market. A lot are not upgraded, but it will make a real long-term difference. Minimum EPC is a good move. I am not sure about C by 2030 though ... that may force poor properties to pool in the Owner Occupied sector as many may not be upgraded economically. There is also an issue with EPCs being redefined every few years .. criminal offences based on movable goalposts is questionable. Next we need minimum EPCs for Owner Occupied properties too. Ferdinand

Cheers. After all, you are still quite a distance from him - even if he gets to build it. Have a Fog Cutter. Council decisions are sometimes like rain. At present we have a corker going on, where the Council accepted a so-called Parking Report riddled with fabrications, and then failed to challenge it in an Appeal and lost the Appeal. Then a new PP intensified the development, and so they are now getting 8 flats that are only about 440sqft each on a site with 3 parking spaces.

@recoveringacademic I think that decision to allow a late Appeal may have been overturnable, but it would have needed well-argued solicitors' letters within days or weeks last November, and perhaps an MP sticking an oar in. But PIs are sensible usually. I would not like to call the outcome of this, since the Council admit in their submission that they did not fully understand Local and National policy when approving "the application immediately adjacent to the North" (Let the Reader Understand) ! F

Yep. Newts are a strange exception amongst protected species - you can move them yourselves iirc from last time I read the Act. (not legal advice) The Natty Newt Men do not have Batty Bat Men style monopoly.

@recoveringacademic There are some areas of ambiguity here, mainly around dates and people not following processes and therefore wriggle room having been created which helped facilitate the acceptance of an Appeal after the obvious end date. Not sure what your intermediate goals are here beyond your desire that your neighbour not getting Permission. After 20 minutes I have: 1 - Seems to have been a delegated decision, which the applicant complained about the processing thereof, which was then referred to Committee 11/5/2016. 2 - Applicant submitted further material to committee dated 9/5/2016. Intriguingly there is at least one doc dated *after* the committee meeting in the issue control of the doc itself ie the datestamp put on it by the applicant. https://publicaccess.wyre.gov.uk/online-applications/files/EB418E21A5A7FBC5D2982CF4F387D86D/pdf/15_00805_OUT-Site_Levels_2.pdf-14685.pdf 3 - Decision Notice is dated 12/5. Seems orthodox, except couched as a letter from the Head of Planning. 4 - There seems to be an Update Notice dated 12/5/2016 which afaics relates to the extra submission of the Applicant. The Update Notice seems to modify the "reasons for refusal". Dunno if this is material in being something which makes the Committee Decision untenable. 5 - For a reason best known to themselves, the Council published nothing until 7 July. It appears that the above convinced the Planning Inspectorate to accept that the case was exceptional enough to use their discretion to accept the Appeal after date. This is the para after your quote above in the PI letter. What is your aim here? Do you intend to stop this Appeal in its tracks, or point up that this can happen and discuss it, and perhaps come back at the Council later? AFAIK once an Appeal Decision is i place, it is impossible to overturn short of a Judicial Review or a Ministerial Call-in, and beyond that you then are into the Civil Legal System (which is the High Court) against your neighbour. To try and stop it now will be Solicitor's or MP's Letters to the PI or a Judicial Review of their decision (may be out of date for that), To find more detail I think you will need the further correspondence of the PI, the Council and the Applicant - which will be FOIs on the Council and the PI, and examining the Planning Fire. Ferdinand

@PeterWThat is presumably code for something you might like to tell me via PM . Had a look and a tour. Looking at the site, it is very tight and obviously built out to the max with small gardens and insufficient wight given to orientation (imo). Driven by the amount that had to be paid for the plot? (What was the advertised price?) Privacy quite compromised by large windows onto the cul-de-sac road for a couple of them. There are 7 detached bungalows on the site now. These 5 and two more modern style on the way in as a separate application. Also 5 terraces under a separate app on the adjacent site. Interesting little backlands development area of exactly the type we should be using now. These 5 bungalows replace a previous app for 4 houses. 1 = 5 2.5 story terrace/semi dwellings. https://publicaccess.newark-sherwooddc.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=summary&keyVal=MQCF47LB68000 2 = 2 detached bungs on back garden. Carefully argued Application. Would have been easy to trip up. https://publicaccess.newark-sherwooddc.gov.uk/online-applications/caseDetails.do?caseType=Application&keyVal=O8ICARLBISS00 3 = 5 big bungs as described in op (2 chalet) https://publicaccess.newark-sherwooddc.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=summary&keyVal=NZCFM2LB0A400 4 = Previous app for 4 det. houses. https://publicaccess.newark-sherwooddc.gov.uk/online-applications/applicationDetails.do?activeTab=summary&keyVal=MBZ216LB68000 (Hope those links work) Densities are all approx 30/ha. Existence of adjacent PPs used in justification. On the site under discussion, all generous rooms and all bedrooms doubles, but upvc double glazing. The two non-traditional designs had a dark grey upvc double glazing where the frames were surprisingly effective looking from a distance. Someone has convinced the builder it is to "highest possible standards" (shades of "best possible taste"). Finish perhaps, but the cavity walls are 110mm rockwool cavity ie basic building regs. Quite nice kitchen/living areas and some views over playing fields, but the orientations ... ouch. Ferdinand