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Another day, yet another little gem of learning. I've been getting a bit worried because although I got the bat licence last week, my glacial paced architect had done nothing about getting the pre-commencement planning conditions discharged for several weeks, even though everything was in place for some time. But that's another grumble for another day. Anyhow, I've got to get the roof off by the end of April, which is why I was getting my proverbial knickers in a twist over the pre-commencement stuff, so I decided to cut out the middle man and rang the planning officer to ask whether, pleeeease, nice Mr Planning Officer, would you mind awfully, as you're such a nice chap, if I sort of, kind of, well, take the roof off the bungalow to make sure no pesky bats come back? Pretty pleeeeeease? Nice Mr Planning Officer said 'no problem at all, no need to grovel, you are entitled to re-roof your house any time you like. Just because you don't get around to putting new tiles back on, that doesn't stop you taking off the existing ones to begin with. Now stop grovelling.' He didn't really tell me stop grovelling, but his tone implied it, along with the strong impression that he couldn't care less about the bats. Either way, result. Fate being the fickle creature that she is, but no more so than the aforesaid architect, I got an email from the architect's admin person late this afternoon to say that they had submitted for discharge of the initial planning conditions. I prodded them with a very sharp stick on Monday morning - the architect has possibly just taken this long to notice. I'm waiting to co-ordinate availability of ground worker and bat guy over the next 2 weeks, then off comes the roof. Followed by the rest of the house shortly afterwards, with luck.

Well the foundations should be going in soon, the ground-workers are all lined up for clearing the plot .. but Stop! We found out a few days ago that 4 (of my 11 conditions) need to be signed off before we do ANY work, expressly making an entrance to the site from the road ...(sigh) anyway i have all the stuff they need so i fired it over, but then got told that i need to fill in this DISCHARGE form ...which looks like a mini planning app But what i didn't think was that each time i ask for a condition to be "ticked off" i pay some dosh! So i read the attached advice from the site, and was under the impression (see what you guys think) that if i submit ONE form, with the 4 conditions on it ...as there is provision to list several conditions on it: then it should be one fee although i was told on the phone it is one fee PER condition

Thought I'd share my experience of this as it's often overlooked in the fight to get planning in the first place. We had a total of 14 conditions to discharge with five pre-commencement conditions, an archeology condition and ground contamination report (we have a basement which likely triggered these last two). The architect practice wanted £15k to work on these along with the Building Control submission so at this point we parted company and I tool them on myself. Quite a few required statements on how we would meet various local policies (sustainable design, lifetime homes) so these were easy enough to do - just obtaining the relevant policy online and replying point by point. We had the usual materials approval and our samples had to be dropped off - I only handed in a roofing slate (a freebie from the local BM) and a render sample. We also had to specify planting (quick google on hedge types) and confirm that we'd comply with the meagre rainwater collection requirements, parking requirements and balcony glass obscurity (these are pre-occupation conditions). We had to produce a site traffic plan, which was pretty easy, and acknowledge a few other restrictions. The longest lead item was the contamination report as we were doing that as part of our ground investigation survey, which itself was a bit of a saga, requiring two visits. We probably could have got away with something cheaper but we did get a very comprehensive report than firmly stated that there were no issues. Then came the big surprise - the amount of time it took to discharge them, a function of our overworked planning team. As there is a fixed fee per submission, not condition, I did them all in one shot and then sat back. Deadlines came and went with very little communication and then the 8 week deadline was exceeded. I emailed the planners to ask what was going on, by this stage you can leverage the planning act to get a default discharge but I held back as I didn't want to antagonise them. When 12 weeks was passed I was less patient and wrote a stiff email, quoting the legislation and asking for a refund of my fee. Low and behold, all conditions were discharged and we were able to start work - I really doubt if they read half of what we submitted.