Kelvin

Yes spend a few hours on your local planning portal. If nothing else it might give you some ideas on what you can do. Has your architect given you any thoughts on the matter?

Conditions (and covenants or restrictions) might well be outdated but they still apply and run with the land or property unless you have them removed. When we sold our last place we ran into a sort of similar problem. There was a covenant on the land (we had a separate field) that restricted the use of the field specifying no livestock. When we bought the house this was never disclosed by the builder, our solicitor didn’t pick it up and when I reviewed the land registry title it didn’t mention it. However, our buyer’s solicitor was much more thorough and uncovered this covenant which extended to all the land around the estate. It was put in place more than 70 years ago by the woman that owned the whole farming estate. She had long since died. The estate had been broken up and sold on. For the 8 years we lived there we kept chickens and horses in the field as we were unaware of this covenant. Our buyer’s were sheep farmers and wanted to use the field as a hospital ‘wing’ effectively. The likelihood of the covenant being enforced was tiny and if someone did try to enforce it, it would be hard for it to be upheld (as there was a Happy Eggs supplier farm next door that had 15,000 chickens and anyone who originally enjoyed the benefit of the covenant had long since gone) Nevertheless the covenant was still stood and we had to take out an indemnity to protect the buyer’s should it ever be enforced.

Oops indeed. Like I said there’s not much point in having these conditions in place if they are ignored.

I don’t have any knowledge of the Velux system. I’m a bit surprised it needs an internet connection to operate? Is that really the case? How does it work. Does it use weather data to determine if it’s going to rain (which would explain the internet connection I guess) or does it have a water sensor? Is the software user configurable? If it’s stuck in a loop of opening and closing then it’s likely a fault. Can you close the window from an app and if so does stay closed or does the same thing happen?

According to the IMF global oil and gas subsidies amount to 5.9 trillion USD. The argument is that without them the cost of oil and gas would be much higher which would drive up global inflation and disproportionately impact emerging nations. The UK Government argues it doesn’t give direct subsidies but it does give the sector tax breaks worth about £13 billion per year. None of this is easy and every decision has consequences. But there needs to be more effort put into energy use reduction per capita. Arguably high prices is a means to achieve that of course.

Everyone isn’t going to swap to EVs over night so it’s a strawman argument. Even with the ban on ICE sales by 2030 (that will be pushed back I expect) it will still take many years before the majority of cars on the road are EVs. The oil and gas industry is still heavily subsidised. The renewables industry still massively under invested. Plus our building standards aren’t anywhere where they need to be.

There’s re-starting fracking and there’s the reality of producing enough gas at scale to make it commercially viable even at these high gas prices. In any event it won’t solve our problem as the gas will be sold at the market rate so if it’s still high then it won’t make electricity cheaper. The answer is still more investment cheap solar and wind plus better built houses and investment in improving existing houses to reduce energy demands.

Details details details… This week’s house is very nice. A lot for the money given all the landscaping too. Yet again, massively over budget and family come to the rescue.

Welcome. You like a challenge! Good for you. Things are similar here in the UK. Everyone is busy and booked up based on my experience so far!

It’s not uncommon for there to be permitted development conditions. We have a permitted development condition on our plot albeit it’s in our favour as it removes the % restriction as we have a big plot. Don’t up though. You know you can get planning so work out what’s the best you can achieve within the guidelines.

There is case law in this area and you could challenge it. My reading of the case law is that the administrative error is neither here nor there it’s what the planning policy states. Therefore if your application meets all of the planning policies they can’t just revoke it willy nilly. However, in your case there is condition attached to the bungalow removing permitted development rights. I think what you need to do is investigate whether or not the condition could be removed. There is little point in developments having conditions applied to them if they get ignored after all. Has anyone else in the immediate neighbourhood built big extensions on similar sized properties? In terms of compensation couldn’t it be argued that you should have been aware of this condition before you made the application? In reference to knocking down and rebuilding. You would build a better house laid out more efficiently making better use of the space potentially. It being a bungalow you could get planning for a 1.5 storey house maybe.

I’m afraid the council can do what they like especially if policy is on their side. You could appeal it but that seems unlikely to succeed. What about knocking the bungalow down and building a new house?

If there is an alternate route out the back (which seems to be the case) then just do it regardless if the neighbour has been friendly or not. It’s always best to put yourself in the shoes of the other party and ask yourself is this reasonable or acceptable. Just because you can doesn’t mean you should. There are a few things we could have done with our plans but chose no to because of the impact on our neighbour which, in fact, was inconsequential in reality.

Agreed. There was some confusion over access and a water course when we were buying our plot that the title for the land we were buying didn’t make clear. However the title for the neighbouring field was very clear about it. It didn’t necessarily help us directly but we ended up negotiating an extra bit of land which the farmer included for no extra cost which was a nice result but only as a consequence of looking at the title of the neighbouring field.

You will probably find the team that comes to put the supply in won’t care too much that everything isn’t exactly as you are being told it needs to be. That was certainly the case with my supply install. I went to great lengths to get everything exactly as SSEN wanted as per the documentation. The blokes that turned up from SSEN never bothered checking anything and didn’t even follow their own guidelines for certain things. You al so might find, as I did, that the specific item they specify is unobtainable.

It’s a good thing in the short term but there needs to be a ground up review of the whole energy sector and an investment strategy to uplift new housing standards, improve existing housing stock and secure energy security. If all that happens is we spend billions hoping that the war ends and wholesale prices stabilise and then reduce we will have wasted the opportunity.

I don’t know of any specific requirements beyond generally 1.5 height and fitting in with the local vernacular especially with materials. Very modern contemporary homes get built in rural Scotland. HebHomes play it safe by building three main house types that are connected to traditional building styles; a longhouse (which is what I’m building), traditional Whitehouse cottage style, and various steadings styles. They also do ‘hut’ style houses called Airigh which are very small houses which I really like and something I might have built in different circumstances. Apparently it’s rare HebHomes buildings don’t achieve planning permission. Our planning decision referenced the very tasteful design that fits into the countryside well.

Meter installed. He said they prefer to install the meter with nothing else in the cabinet other than the fuse because more often than not the electrician doesn’t leave enough room for the meter and master switch. So it would have been with the other electrical work.

That description sounds like this Ubiquiti airCube airMAX (the codes match if you google them one is 2.4 and the other is 5) If that’s the case it’s not a router it’s an access point that will be connected to whichever box they use to connect to their network. If that’s the case you could buy a different access point that has both frequencies. Worth asking them at least. As far as your question goes (will it make much difference) Probably none that you will notice.

They’ve told you what you need to do to be compliant. How easy is it to adapt your plans to meet every point they’ve raised. You could appeal but that will take a considerable amount of time and is only likely to be successful if you can demonstrate your building is within the council’s planning policies.

Every ‘professional’ fee seems to be about £1000 inc VAT. Get some more quotes.

You know for sure that it once worked? And is it definitely running even though the control isn’t lit up green?

Rather than object right now go and see them pointing out the things you are concerned about that directly impact you. They’ll either listen and agree to some changes that you are happy with or they’ll ignore you forcing you to formally object. When you object you need to focus on the things that contravene planning policy. Drip feeding objections with the sole aim of slowing everything up by a year doesn’t help anyone not least of all you. Our plot had several objections raised to the initial planning in principle application (wasn’t us that made the application) When I was buying the plot I read through the objections. All bar one was inconsequential nonsense that could be best summarised as ‘I just object to this’. None of the objections were acted upon and planning was approved. When I bought the land I did my best to take into account some of the objections. I didn’t need to but I wanted to get on with my one neighbour. I showed her the plans etc and did everything to be accommodating. No further objections were raised and we got approval. The neighbour has subsequently died and the house is now empty.

It’s as I described above. It actuates the braking system. Some will hold it on the brakes until the car detects that you’ve moved off. Most just hold the brakes for a few seconds. My MY19 Jimny will hill hold for 2 secs.

The way hill hold works on manual cars is via an incline sensor where if it detects you are on a hill it engages the brakes. It then uses a combination of other sensors to work out if the engine torque and wheel speed is enough to defeat the incline so it disengages the brakes. Other systems do the same thing where you have the clutch pedal fully depressed and foot on the brake. When you lift off the brake pedal the brakes remain engaged as you lift the clutch up to the biting point where it disengages the brakes. The original system was developed in the 1930s using a ball bearing in the brake line to detect the incline and lock the braking system.