A New Laxative : Self Builder's Special Edition

[ToughButterCup]

I think I weigh about a stone less than I did this morning. 

Honestly, I would rather have climbed a Lancastrian Mill chimney a la Fred Dibnah, no safety gear, no clothes on,  a woodpecker snapping at my withers on a freezing morning before dawn. Here's why.

 

Back in the mists of time, 6 years ago now, we got Outline Planning Permission, and then Full PP.  We went throught Outline and Approved Matters route (2015). Then it was Head down Arse Up Go wasn't it? A few light traumas on the way - nowt like it will be for all those brave souls starting out now - but traumas there were. Successes too.

 

And like the diligent person I am, I save all our invoices in a folder just like I was advised here.

 

And promptly lost them in the move into our as yet unfinished-but-habitable house.

Cue an extended office exercise, culling as many invoices as I could get by begging, cajoling (the people at the Screwfix head office are NASTY) and a bit of banter and using online accounts where I had had the forethought to create one. Local BM , Haldane Fisher were smashing. This time, all saved on my computer. 

 

VAT refund looms. Read the Application Form first page (VAT431C) , got the spreadsheet all bright shiny and accurate, skim the Notes - nay borra tae the likes o' me Jimmie

 

Time to fill in the declaration and Checklist 

 

Nice people at HMRC, they give you a Checklist. This is what caused a sharp exit to the smallest room in the house

Just about to type an X in the box marked Yes  when I read '...and Approval of Reserve Matters...'

 

Oh (expletive deleted)ety foockety foockety foockinghell. I have never even seen that document . Ever. Ever ever ever.

And I'd downloaded all the documentation from that cursed website for future reference onto my hard disk. Hadn't I?

 

Back onto the LPA website, that's where it'll be: (wyre brorough planning website) that den of juvenile web design, that fantasy playground invented by a demented drunken Planner. The relevant document MUST BE THERE  musn't it? Oh Please God it is.

 

Nother trip to the smallest room.

On the website. Huh? Won't let me in ... need to register .... Whadya mean you twats, I've friggin registered years ago . Arghhh, you barstewards, you f.....ers New website Design. All over the place. Beads of cold sweat trickle down my face

 

Decision Notices. Earliest ones: 2016. Panic is now real - a calm decends. Thats it, no time now before my submission deadline (next week). Oh Hell, how do I break this to Debbie? Divorce?

Cat jumps on my lap. Starts to purr. Calm. A moment to think. 

 

Ring the architect. 

"Reserved Matters Approval? Yeah, why, haven't you got a copy? "

 

15 long seconds later it was in my In Box.

 

The re-designed website  had no documentation on it earlier than the summer of 2016. Our Reserved Matters Approval, August 2015.

So if anyone wants to refer to a Planning Application before 2016 in Wyre Borough, yer stuffed.

 

I hate Planners, I hate webdesigners, I hate the people who don't know how to handle Databases efficiently, and I really deeply loathe those lazy bastards that learn just enough about database normalisation to falsely claim they know how to design a Content Management system.

 

There ought to be a law against it.

Goin' dahn da pub ternight..... Coming?

 

 

 

 

[Big Jimbo]

Well done for getting it sorted. Defo a rear end tremor moment.

[Roundtuit]

Ha!  One of those self-build moments that convert your ar$ehole into a manhole.  I remember the time I thought my planning permission had lapsed whilst my new application was still in progress...

[ProDave]

Sometimes you wonder who designs the forms etc, thinking of the MHRC.

 

So you get outline PP first.  Then you get full PP, sometimes referred to as Approval of Reserved Matters, but not always.

 

So surely it is only the FULL planning permission that matters?  WHY do they want a copy of the outline planning, that became an irellevant document the day the full planning was granted?

 

My concern with the VAT claim thing was what happens if the post fails and your claim and your valuable invoices never arrived.  You can't insure a packet of documents for the value of a VAT claim.  All I could come up with is laboriously scan every single invoice and store a copy on my NAS drive, so in the unlikely event of the claim getting lost in the post, I could reproduce all the invoices but they would clearly be a copy not originals.

 

So the lessons to anyone early in the self build sage:

 

Keep a copy of all planning documents.

 

Keep every single invoice in date order in a box file or similar.

 

I chose to do my VAT claim the old fashioned way by filling in the paper form.  If I were doing it again, I would enter each invoice onto the form as I got it, to save days of tedious work when compiling the claim at the end.

[joe90]

It’s covered by your red ring, but does it not say OR between full planning and outline?, also does it not say “both documents not needed” ?

[recoveringbuilder]

Happened to us when we were selling our first self build, built 1992 selling 14years later, day before completion solicitor asks for the permission from Sepa for the septic tank , of course I don’t have it , trip to the local authority office in the days when you could actually speak face to face with someone, rattled off what I was looking for and the very kind lady says it’ll need to come from the vault which will take 7-10 days! Then she said what month and year are we talking I said August 1992 , few clicks on her computer and she said you’re in luck everything from July 92 onwards is on computer, £15 later I had it in my hand!

[recoveringbuilder]

9 minutes ago, joe90 said:

It’s covered by your red ring, but does it not say OR between full planning and outline?, also does it not say “both documents not needed” ?

No definitely want both 

[joe90]

1 hour ago, recoveringbuilder said:

No definitely want both 

Strange, we didn’t get outline planning permission, just full planning after going to appeal  (but my VAT man did my claim).

[joe90]

1 hour ago, recoveringbuilder said:

No definitely want both 

That refers to outline planning AND reserved matters. I am correct that it’s full planning permission OR outline permission with reserved matters….

quote…..

Full Planning Permission 
Or
Outline Planning Permission and
Approval of Reserved Matters
 Note: both documents are needed

[recoveringbuilder]

1 hour ago, joe90 said:

That refers to outline planning AND reserved matters. I am correct that it’s full planning permission OR outline permission with reserved matters….

quote…..

Full Planning Permission 
Or
Outline Planning Permission and
Approval of Reserved Matters
 Note: both documents are needed

We had outline and detailed planning and had to supply both 

[joe90]

6 minutes ago, recoveringbuilder said:

We had outline and detailed planning and had to supply both 

but the quote above is from the actual VAT form which says “or”.    ?‍♂️

[recoveringbuilder]

19 minutes ago, joe90 said:

but the quote above is from the actual VAT form which says “or”.    ?‍♂️

Yes well I only sent the full pp and got a phone call asking for the planning in principle also 

[joe90]

3 minutes ago, recoveringbuilder said:

Yes well I only sent the full pp and got a phone call asking for the planning in principle also 

Ah, ok, glad they didn’t ask me as I only had full planning ?

[newhome]

I sent the PP for the 2 houses here and they wrote and asked for the full PP for 2 different style houses on the plot from a few years earlier. I had never seen that PP and it wasn’t on the planning portal. Contacted the council but although they had a reference to it they didn’t have a scanned copy of the PP. They said that they would try to get it back from the archives for me but then said that it couldn’t be located. I rang HMRC and they told me not to worry. I can’t imagine how it could be relevant to the VAT claim  . I think they just make it up as they go along! 
 

[ProDave]

26 minutes ago, newhome said:

I sent the PP for the 2 houses here and they wrote and asked for the full PP for 2 different style houses on the plot from a few years earlier. I had never seen that PP and it wasn’t on the planning portal. Contacted the council but although they had a reference to it they didn’t have a scanned copy of the PP. They said that they would try to get it back from the archives for me but then said that it couldn’t be located. I rang HMRC and they told me not to worry. I can’t imagine how it could be relevant to the VAT claim  . I think they just make it up as they go along! 
 

Like I say what relevance is past expired planning permissions?  All that is relevant is the final approved plans that you actually built to, and they only need those as a sanity check to make sure you are not building a tiny house and claiming for more materials than it actually used.

 

Sometimes you think they make extra work and extra hoops to jump through for no valid reason.

[Thorfun]

13 hours ago, newhome said:

I sent the PP for the 2 houses here and they wrote and asked for the full PP for 2 different style houses on the plot from a few years earlier. I had never seen that PP and it wasn’t on the planning portal. Contacted the council but although they had a reference to it they didn’t have a scanned copy of the PP. They said that they would try to get it back from the archives for me but then said that it couldn’t be located. I rang HMRC and they told me not to worry. I can’t imagine how it could be relevant to the VAT claim  . I think they just make it up as they go along! 
 

this is a very common technique when trying to buy some time if you're overworked. I've done it before in IT support where you ask the customer for information that may or may not be relevant and then wait for the response. while waiting it gives you time to work on something else and also makes the customer think that you're working on their problem as you've contacted them for information. so it's a bit of a cheeky win-win tactic.