Ferdinand

Hi Where's North? And the best views? And the main part of your garden? Cheers F

As with most others, I think a little jiggery-pokery and you could be there. I would suggest making your pipes symmetrical, aligning the gable-bottom with the roof, if poss putting that flue pipe behind the ridge, and perhaps bringing the door arch inside the frame of the quoins (= the larger blocks on the corners of the walls). But see if you can tease out of the PO what are his suggestions. F

Driving by, what does your recent EPC say? Not sure about just how they fit in the process, but it only costs about £50 to get a new one done.

I would think about plywood on a couple of sides of the frame, for extra rigidity.

I think a thermal photo would show up gaps in the insulation even better.

We were missing you. x

On the missing name address, can you get a stamp made up then just stamp your n/a on it so that it looks like it was done at the time? Does that help? Don't make them all look identical, or ink to soak through to the next. "Couple of questions" - I love engineering approximations.

One other elephant in this room is that even if implemented now there would be at least 5 years (more likely 8-9 ) before it made it into a significant proportion of houses being built. The housing estate I obtained Outline PP for in 2012/13 on family land has started to be built in summer 2020 ... and it's not a very big one by developer standards.

Recognise the issue, however afaik the actual % of flats in UK is more like 20-25% (6 million from 30 million ish). https://files.bregroup.com/bretrust/The-Housing-Stock-of-the-United-Kingdom_Report_BRE-Trust.pdf Fig 2.4.

Another word for solar cover = "greenhouse".

A couple of potential impacts: 1 - I would see low end house prices in Bolsover drift up over time due to the reduced cost of running a house, which would lift certain zombie infill building plots into viability. ie Plot work cost + build cost becomes > potential sale price. ie Some plots become worth more than zero. 2 - Potential price reductions in London and similar? Needs more evaluation, and the London market is slightly chaotic at present. F

Back on topic. I have been running some numbers on the proposals we discussed for replacing Council Tax and Stamp Duty with an annual tax of 0.48% on house value, and it is surprising in 2-3 respects: 1 - Significant benefit for less wealthy areas. In eg Bolsover virtually everyone will benefit. A household in a 80-100k trad terrace will be approx £1000 a year better off. In that sort of area the balance is between Council Tax and the new Tax, and Stamp Duty is nearly irrelevant for the huge majority. That is a 2-3% uplift in a typical household income. It becomes neutral at roughly the level of a 250k-300k house in that area. But above that no Stamp Duty becomes a bonus. 2 - In wealthier areas the balance at 300k-500k or so house level is between CT and the new Tax, with no Stamp Duty as a long term sweetener as the new tax exceeds current CT level. Even in London the median house price is 450k-ish, so a majority benefit. 3 - In really wealthy areas it alters. Take George Osborne's old house in Notting Hill, £4m ish, and the Annual Tax is 19k, but about 400k of Stamp Duty is taken out of the transaction on sale or purchase. Is that a loss? It is a really intriguing hybrid of a services tax and a wealth tax, and very well designed by the coalition. The website for the original proposers are here, and it includes a loss/gain calculator: https://fairershare.org.uk/ Their numbers are that 75% of households will save. To me this looks like potentially the first strategic shift towards the so called "levelling up" agenda, whilst so far we have had proposals for revectoring of Govt Expenditure. May write to my MP on this one.

This is the comparison table with past and future regs @the_r_sole. Plus doc attached. Where do you think the extra cost is? Column 3 is the interim measures to come in soon. Column 4 is the FHS, which in connection with a decarbonised power supply is the route to Zero Carbon. I'm not really sure that I see huge extra cost in the interim, though some certainly, and I think that is by design. The big changes are the low temp heating (wonder if big rads count?), and the interesting tactical thing of Wastewater HR and is that compulsory PV (would affect estate layout?), which go away again (later put them back for a route to carbon positive?), and the gas boiler ban. To me the fabric changes are not *that* ambitious. I think that including the impact of zero carbon energy supply is probably correct, as that is likely to happen first given where we are at present. There's a contrast between the huge majority of responses demanding more, more, more, and the smaller number of people living in older houses who have not taken action themselves. I think the air permeability is not ambitious enough, and perhaps also a couple of others. 2021-Government_response_to_Future_Homes_Standard_consultation.pdf

er .... but perhaps not Kingspan or St Gobain ?. I think 0.15 is roughly what many of us build to. eg 0.15 is Brick Outer, 120mm Celotex or 225mm EPS, and Lightweight Block Inner. So not that demanding in BH context. There's a comparison table which I will post. I have not got my head around what standards will apply to extension. Will this be the same? The thicker of the two versions of Durisol, without extra internal insulation, is about 0.15 .

Agree with Tony's last comment - I have been whinging about this for some years in various places. ? My estimates are that theoretically "reasonably" well insulated homes are recent (what do we say - post 2000? or post 2010) only accumulate at about 1% of the stock per year (250k a year, 25 million stock, ish), and that each of these represents perhaps 20-50% (guestimate based on about 3 bands of EPC grading representing a halving of C02 emissions very roughly) of the emissions of an older one. I think a move from an E/F to a C is a halving of emissions roughly. There are various profiles you can do about how far various grades of stock are insulated and how much to get numbers. On this one we need to follow, Scotland and begin to think about applying the "rental EPC ratchet" (rentals likely required to be EPC C by 2030 unless a spanner is put in the works of the ratchet) to all Owner Occupied housing. That has worked in that in England rental housing is now better on the EPC scale than OO (English Housnig Survey 2 years ago) - albeit by not vey much. I think this will happen because it is the easiest way imo to hit the medium term extra C02-reduction target. And GHG is beginning to address the issue. Ferdinand

In the Hi Tech Telegraph you just switch Javascript off.

Are you sure insulation in the ground will keep it warm? Worth a heat modell?

Put in a Homer Simpson video by mistake. More seriously, perhaps find an outside authority to define what you need for PP. Maybe there is an instructional video somewhere. One source is to look at a few other PPs for individual houses on your Council website and see how extensive the document set isn't, and also perhaps how the design evolved. Somebody on here did a very few pages, with self-drawn hard copy plans.

And welcome.

If your architect is knowledgeable in Planning and engaged to get it through planning, I would perhaps back off and let them run it. So you hopefully swerve the whole domestic tussle. If that will work. Though a different floor height may affect windows which may affect planning. In general, planning are interested in stuff that affects other people rather than what colour your taps are. Relatively little internal affects other people, beyond things inside that define penetrations eg windows and flues etc, stuff that defines appearance etc. F

That looks ... quite posh. It will be fun when Buttercup visits.

Here you go for a description of Special Measures. It has only been applied to 3 LPAs - that is once every 10 years. You are quite special ? . ------------------------------------------------------------- https://www.designingbuildings.co.uk/wiki/Special_measures_designation_for_under-performing_planning_authorities Special measures designation for under-performing planning authorities Section 62A of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990 allows certain applications to be made directly to the Secretary of State for Communities and Local Government where a local planning authority has been 'designated'. The Growth and Infrastructure Act 2013 gave the Secretary of State power to 'designate' local planning authorities if their performance in handling major planning applications was below an acceptable standard. Under the original provisions of the Act, local planning authorities could be designated as under-performing and placed under 'special measures' by the Secretary of State if: 30% or fewer of their decisions on major applications were made within the statutory determination period or such extended period agreed in writing with the applicant. The statutory period is 13 weeks, unless an application is subject to Environmental Impact Assessment, in which case it is 16 weeks. A major application is an application for 10 homes or more, or the equivalent commercial floorspace. More than 20% of major applications decisions were overturned on appeal. Local planning authorities under special measures have applications determined by the planning inspectorate and lose a proportion of the application fee. Special measures designation is reviewed annually to allow improving authorities to regain their determination powers. However, on 28 November 2014, in response to a consultation on the criteria for identifying under-performing planning authorities, the Department for Communities and Local Government (DCLG) announced its intention to raise the threshold for decisions on major applications from 30% to 40%. Ref Planning performance and planning contributions. Then, on 24 August 2015, following publication of ‘Fixing the foundations’, the government formally revised the threshold again to 50 per cent. Ref Improving planning performance: criteria for designation. The government pointed out that up until that time, only three planning authorities had been subject to special measures and two of those had subsequently had their designation lifted. In November 2016, the government published Improving planning performance Criteria for designation (revised 2016) Presented to Parliament pursuant to section 62B of the Town and Country Planning Act 1990. This will increase the threshold for major projects to 60% and for non-major projects of 70%, but will also introduce a quality threshold of 10%. The quality threshold relates to the percentage of the total number of decisions made by the authority on applications that are then subsequently overturned at appeal. The criteria have effect from the day following the end of the statutory 40 day period during which Parliament may consider the measures, provided neither House resolves not to approve it.

Government appointed supervision / management because the thing has gone to hell in a handcart.

Every Appeal costs the Council money to pay for prep.

Does it create a microclimate where you can grow something interesting? It will certainly keep moulds and bugs down via the airflow, and probably protect from frost. Why not try some container-plants. I suppose also it matters where it blows or sucks from, as potentially leaves could be sucked in.