What happens after Planning Submission?

[Gimp]

So I've just recently applied for planning submission (first time of doing so), all it tells me on the planning portal is that its 10 days for validation, but very little other than that. Is it just a case of sit it out and wait to hear? I know its eight weeks time limit which gets set back every time there is/when there is an issue. Does anyone know if I get some sort of standardized notification within this period as to what is happening? I've briefly spoken to planning and it does not appear at this stage that any surveys are required, phew  but I get the impression they are inundated with work and I'm not likely to hear a great deal from them until near/at the end. Anyone whose been through this process got any inkling of what might pop up if at all anything?  

[Gone West]

I didn't hear anything from the LPA about my applications. I had to ask them after seven weeks in order to know what was going on. This is a very poor LPA though. Their website isn't always updated either.

[PeterW]

1 hour ago, Gimp said:

I know its eight weeks time limit which gets set back every time there is/when there is an issue.

 

Not strictly true. If your app is incomplete then the clock doesn't start ticking. If it's complete then the only way for it to go past the 8 weeks and not be in breach is for the council to write to you and ask for more time. 

 

Best way to check is go onto the council planning portal and do a search on how many applications submitted in the week of 30th Jan have undecided status. That gives an indication of whether they hit the target but it's a pretty rough and ready way of doing it ..!

[joe90]

Yes, do not agree to extend their time to validate your application otherwise THEY WILL and you will go backwards in the system. Validation simply means they confirm you have completed the application correctly and nothing is missing/incorrect. In my opinion most LPA,s do things at the last minute because of overwork / lack of staff. I wish you luck.

[RichS]

Or, as in my case, you submit the application and then argue about it for 2 years before they finally agree.

Hope your LPA are a lot better.

 

 

[Gimp]

1 hour ago, RichS said:

Or, as in my case, you submit the application and then argue about it for 2 years before they finally agree.

Hope your LPA are a lot better.

 

 

Two years! I've heard of it being this long or longer on the TV building shows but never really envisaged how. My Planner asked for a small amendment and it seemed reasonable to do in part so as to help with the process, it only took a few days so not a problem. I would be concerned though if the outlook became that it was something to argue about as it is after all another build among many and at least from my perspective the best that could be made of the site. I was kind of hoping to be getting going on site this summer, lol.  

[Gimp]

Thanks for the input guys, I appreciate it  I was just wondering if there are any other forms I should submit apart from the standard online application form and and drawn up plans. I never submitted a copy of title deeds, they did not bring this up and I assume they have it all on record online anyway these days. There was also a button for CIL at the bottom of the page but I couldn't quite determine whether or when I should fill this out, it just seemed a bit apart from the rest of the application process. Generally my application is not one that would incur CIL but on part of the notes within CIL it seemed to suggest everyone does one anyway, but was not easy to determine when or really if I should given its odd placement apart on screen from the rest of the application, has anyone else come across this?  

[joe90]

1 hour ago, RichS said:

Or, as in my case, you submit the application and then argue about it for 2 years before they finally agree.

Hope your LPA are a lot better.

 

 

Yes but surely you didn't have to wait 2 years to get it validated?. ( I took three years to get planning permission, 4 applications and I won by going to appeal to the sec of State on my original design ?)

[Gimp]

1 hour ago, joe90 said:

Yes but surely you didn't have to wait 2 years to get it validated?. ( I took three years to get planning permission, 4 applications and I won by going to appeal to the sec of State on my original design ?)

Three years!!! This is all very disturbing to me. Surely it can't be a usual phenomenon. How come they had such issue with your plans joe90, isn't it just a case of winning over the planner whose dealing with your application from the outset?

[PeterW]

Despite their being a series of national planning "standards" they are applied in an arbitrary way by understaffed and overworked departments ... recipe for disaster ..!

[Ian]

Like @joe90 our PP which was in an AONB in N Wales took 3 years including 2 full planning applications and an appeal - the local planners were obstructive and slow and fought us every step of the way. Thank god for the appeal process which was efficiently dealt with and relatively quick - the inspector sent up from Cardiff was brilliant.

[Ferdinand]

@gimp you just cannot tell how long it will take for definite.

 

Best estimate is probably found by reading similar apps from your own LPA but things can change e.g. You may hit the hurt-spot of a Councillor or their buddy who then calls it in to committee.

Edited April 2, 2017 by Ferdinand

[Gimp]

2 hours ago, PeterW said:

Despite their being a series of national planning "standards" they are applied in an arbitrary way by understaffed and overworked departments ... recipe for disaster ..!

Yeah, that is the impression I get from speaking to planning that the planning officer will move to a decision on a basis of points that may have substantial evidence brought forward to the contrary, but will have been either disregarded, not recognized or not even looked at. Like you I get the impression that they are in part if not mostly like this because they don't have the time on their hands to go into all the in's and out's & context of each application. Hence probably why the Design & Access statement got scrapped as they just didn't have the time for it in the end. The impression I got was that they seemed to have the stance of what they say is the official stance on your application, end off. I'm still hopeful but thought it wise to inquire about what I may do further up the road in case my doubts ring true. Many thanks for the insight. 

[Gimp]

2 hours ago, Ian said:

Like @joe90 our PP which was in an AONB in N Wales took 3 years including 2 full planning applications and an appeal - the local planners were obstructive and slow and fought us every step of the way. Thank god for the appeal process which was efficiently dealt with and relatively quick - the inspector sent up from Cardiff was brilliant.

My site is in Wales also but not in an official area of AONB, it is not in a National Park either. However, it is in an area I'm sure could be described as one of beauty. I think when speaking to planning I recall the planning officer make reference to AOBN or similar area of beauty, not that its a real ugly proposal I've got planned or at least everyone I've shown it too doesn't think so, lol. I would not be surprised though if AOBN or similar gets brought as a reason for refusal in an arbitrary way as PeterW suggests they tend to act. So appeal might be the best way for me to go if there are a lot of issues brought up to avoid a long saga. I don't mind making small amendaments and those that seem logically justified but if its just a brick wall mentality I end up with appeal my be the best route I'm thinking. 

 

Did you try to amend to what the Planner suggested in your application or was it just an 'agree to disagree' situation? 

Edited April 3, 2017 by Gimp

[ToughButterCup]

Can I suggest you do  a bit of networking?

Have  a word with your mates, ask around. Who is dealing with your case (sometimes called a Case Officer)? Read Decision Notices written by that person. Who has any experience of working with that officer? Talk to your local councillors, and in particular the one who has responsibility for Planning. Look at time scales - date submitted (i.e. validated) to Decision notice dates. There will be a range of time scales - yours is  likely to be in the middle of that range if your application is unexceptional.

 

Take an interest in refusals. Why were applications refused? If you can, look for those that were refused , and  subsequently overturned at Appeal. That can be very instructive.

 

All this research will only hint at the answer you will be given. Not so very far from me, there is a case of an application which bears  the hallmarks of grudge; between applicant, officers, Head of Planning and others. Unevidenced claim and counter-claim, almost pointless pre-conditions, official complaints aired at public meeting(s), obvious and uncomfortably documented erroneous procedure.  And the application may yet succeed.

[Triassic]

My application, in a National Park, with part of the building site in a SSSI went through without a hitch. Walk round the immediate neighbours with your plans, get them on side, then sit back for seven weeks, then if they fail your application come back here to share the outcome. Chill !

[Ian]

6 hours ago, Gimp said:

Did you try to amend to what the Planner suggested in your application or was it just an 'agree to disagree' situation? 

@Gimp our planning application had some unusual aspects to it that meant that even though I work as an architect I knew before we started that we would need expert help so I employed a local (N Wales based) firm of Planning Consultants. Without their professional help and expert advice we wouldn't have had a hope of getting the PP that we eventually achieved. I can thoroughly recommend them - their fees were very reasonable and they were efficient and clear with their advice. Their appeal success rate is much better than the national average. Let me know if want me to whisper their name to you or I can give it publicly if that's allowed in forum rules. I've no connection with them other than with this one project which was a holiday home for myself on a plot of land that's been in the family for 90 years.

 

Edit- admin have said it's okay to mention the name of the Planning Consultants in North Wales that I used - its a company called Owen Devenport http://www.owendevenport.co.uk/ and I dealt with Berwyn Owen and Jamie Bradshaw.

(context - although I work as an architect I have no professional or personal connection with Owen Devenport other than employing them to work for me on this one project - a process which lasted 3 years . I can recommend them without reservation. We wouldn't have got PP without them)

Edited April 3, 2017 by Ian

[Gone West]

10 hours ago, Gimp said:

Three years!!! This is all very disturbing to me. Surely it can't be a usual phenomenon. How come they had such issue with your plans joe90, isn't it just a case of winning over the planner whose dealing with your application from the outset?

It was very similar for me too. It just depends on your LPA and the particular planning officer assigned your case.

[ToughButterCup]

16 hours ago, Gimp said:

So I've just recently applied for planning submission [...] Is it just a case of sit it out and wait to hear? [...]

 

Don't just sit. Plan, plan plan.

Ian

[Ferdinand]

Unfortunately there are far too many approaches, tips, tricks and wrinkles to relist here , and I do not think we have them in one place codified. And they vary by Council.

 

So you will need to dig into the forum for the detail.

 

One thing I can recommend is the support files on the Planning Portsl website, and the Planning Advice service run by RICS.

 

I have comments on scores of threads, but to codify them would literally write a book.

 

Ferdinand

[Jeremy Harris]

I picked up quite a bit about the planning process when we were plot hunting, a process that took several years.  One thing that stood out was that some planning consultants have a very much higher success rate than others, that was apparent by just reading the planning lists for the local authorities in our search area every week.

 

Two examples that spring to mind, the second being our own plot:

 

In the next village up the valley from where we live there is a pretty classic infill plot, part of the very large garden to a bungalow built in the 1970's, with a (now disused) track running through it from the lane to what used to be a chicken farm.  The track belongs to the bungalow, but is now part of what is just a very overgrown area, covered in brambles.  The owner of the bungalow (a local farmer) applied for planning permission to build two, four bedroom "executive homes" on this land.  Given that the land is inside a conservation area and dead opposite a Grade I listed church, this plan was clearly doomed, and it was rejected because of the scale of the development and because the design would have had a negative impact on the setting of the listed building.  A second application was submitted for a single 5 bedroom "executive home", and, surprise, surprise, that was also rejected for the same reasons.

 

At this point I decided to approach the landowner, asking if he'd consider selling the land to us, dependent on me getting PP.  He was a bit blunt, and asked what made me think I could get PP when his "expert" hadn't been able to?  Despite this I went and saw the planning officer (this was back in the days when you could do this) and asked if there was a problem with the principle of development of this land.  He said that there wasn't, and that the only reasons for refusal were to do with the design and scale of the proposals being out of keeping with the surrounding houses, and, in particular, the listed building.  I sketched a proposal out, sent it to the planning officer and he said that he would almost certainly support it.  I went back to the land owner, gave him the news, and he told me to bugger off.  The land is still undeveloped now, some 8 years later.  The moral of this tale is that a competent planning consultant could have definitely gained PP for this plot, I believe, but that the rather incompetent firm that the land owner had used just hadn't read the reasons for refusal, and spotted that there was no objection in principle to developing the plot.

 

Our own plot had a very chequered planning history; it took the original owner 4 years and three applications to get outline approval, for much the same reason as described in the story above.  When PP was eventually granted it was with some pretty onerous conditions.  The odd thing is that when we bought it, and set about looking to see how we could get PP for the house we wanted, which was radically different from the outline proposal, we had no objections from anyone, and the decision went through without even going to committee.  I'm convinced that most of the reason for this is because I made a scale model of the site, which clearly showed that the house was going to be set down ~2.5m into the hillside, so would be far less prominent that local residents had thought.  I'm convinced that a lot of people struggle to read plans and visualise how something will look, and assume the worst.

 

 

Edited April 3, 2017 by JSHarris

[Ferdinand]

3 hours ago, Triassic said:

My application, in a National Park, with part of the building site in a SSSI went through without a hitch. Walk round the immediate neighbours with your plans, get them on side, then sit back for seven weeks, then if they fail your application come back here to share the outcome. Chill !

 

Just to illustrate, in slightly different circumstances talking to people may kill your proposal stone dead.

 

An example is trees. If a neighbour wishes to stop your development he can ask the Tree Officer to put a Preservation Order on a Tree under the guise of protecting a community asset, and the TO may or may not do it. If they do, then you have restrictions, and conditions as to what you can do. May be OK; may not be OK.

 

It may not stop you, but it may add thousands.

 

Equally if you have considered in advance you may have decided which trees you wish to retain, and removed the others. IN that case they are not 'Materiql Planning Matters'. But even removing them will be a cost, and you may still not get permission.

 

You are in those circs dependent on the goodwill of your neighbours, and who the particular TO may be, and possibly whether they have just been bawled out by a Councillor in the local paper for not protecting enough trees in the last month.

 

There is a derelict house with about 7 TPOs on the half acre garden near here, which has been empty since the mid 1980s, and cannot be realistically developed while the trees are still there. It should have had 5 houses on it 15 years ago. They have now at last been removed under Dead Decaying Dangerous provisions aiui and it can move ahead.

 

So it is in some measure a cross between poker and a lottery. You can mitigate, and derisk, and find advisers, and learn some tactics and techniques to help decisions go the way you want, and know what your local policies are on matters like technicalities and locals Housing mix required and go out of your way to meet all the policies so making reasons for refusal more difficult to find.

 

But it is not certain, and otoh you may have no problems at all.

 

Question to others: is there a good chapter on this in the House Builders' Bible we can recommend? I struggle with the book because my copy is like reading a Microdot, and I cannot find a Kindle version.

 

Ferdinand

Edited April 3, 2017 by Ferdinand

[ToughButterCup]

7 hours ago, JSHarris said:

[...]

I'm convinced that a lot of people struggle to read plans and visualise how something will look, and assume the worst.

 

The research evidence completely supports your conclusion. Worse, when I trained with Simon Catling, we learned how few teachers taught even the rudiments of making or interpreting a simple plan, never mind issues like the appreciation of third angle projection or isometric drawing.

(Apologies for the digression)

Ian

[hmpmarketing]

10 hours ago, Ferdinand said:

Walk round the immediate neighbours with your plans, get them on side,

 

2 things I would like to add (from my own experience with my planning applications):

 

- Speak with your neighbours (although I see you have already submitted your app); however do not reveal too much information and at the same time, dont ask them what they think about your plans!!! I had a word and introduced myself to every single one of my neighbours (except number 14 as many of you know!!!) and everyone has been very nice to me up to now, even got one to allow me to remove a tree from his garden! And I am 3 weeks away from completion!

 

- Be nice with your case officer. I have always contacted him any chance I had, what I was about to do as well as asking questions as kindly as possible. He has helped me all the way. Proof is I requested for a "major" height increase for my double garage on a new application and he was very helpful to point out exactly what I needed to do and I got it approved in less than 3 months. You need him to be on your side

Edited April 3, 2017 by hmpmarketing

[Gimp]

3 hours ago, hmpmarketing said:

 

2 things I would like to add (from my own experience with my planning applications):

 

- Speak with your neighbours (although I see you have already submitted your app); however do not reveal too much information and at the same time, dont ask them what they think about your plans!!! I had a word and introduced myself to every single one of my neighbours (except number 14 as many of you know!!!) and everyone has been very nice to me up to now, even got one to allow me to remove a tree from his garden! And I am 3 weeks away from completion!

 

- Be nice with your case officer. I have always contacted him any chance I had, what I was about to do as well as asking questions as kindly as possible. He has helped me all the way. Proof is I requested for a "major" height increase for my double garage on a new application and he was very helpful to point out exactly what I needed to do and I got it approved in less than 3 months. You need him to be on your side

I think your no doubt a lot more people skilled than I am HMP . The planner I spoke to who I believe is handling my case did at least seem down to earth and reasonable enough, not too stuffy and someone you could talk to. However, I'm not the kind of guy that can wangle favours from people with a slick tongue. 

 

With the neighbours I really prefer not to talk. I think I'm likely to do more damage to my chances than be at all beneficial. Odds are I would probably end up unintentionally winding them up, drawing attention to the situation and raising concern over my plans where otherwise they may not be bothered. I've spoken to the old chap one side when he happened to notice me on site, he seemed friendly enough but seemed to reserve any opinion other than on site history do I felt it best not to press (think he's a tenant at any rate). The guys the other side looked fairly old as well, didn't look the approachable type though. They didn't look the intellectual type and as such wouldn't bother objecting unless you approached and got into a conversation with them that didn't go well. The impression I got is that they might have a gut reaction to any sort of an approach and immediately be seen as a enemy/raise hostility. I generally see myself as usually quite decent at analysing the social environment around me even if I not that good in it. The impression I got of the area is that it seemed better to take it slow and steady as the folk around there seemed to be a bit guarded at first and being real full on in their face could be very counter-productive. You might well pull it off better but I am likely to make a mess of it, worsening my chances rather than assisting them, lol.

 

My thoughts are that an application from a fairly anonymous individual here for me is likely be better than from someone they have met. If its from an anonymous somebody who they have not met they may be cautious about sticking there two peneth worth in an creating hostility/enemy of a potential future next door neighbour they do not know. If its someone they have met then they know who they are and if did not take to well are likely to follow through in viewing the application the same way.

 

To be honest I really don't see what all this clap trap of jogging around and petitioning neighbours should have to do with building a building anyway, its a complete oddity to my mind like a kind of curious convention that should have a decade or more ago. Even on the planning application its got about whether you've approached your neighbours, who are they, view, etc (what if they viewed it bad its not going to help matters in which case better not to approach at all). I think the only time you should be really called upon to approach neighbours is if there is an obvious aspect that will affect their property/house. Other all this running around seems a lot of silliness that really shouldn't be brought into it. After all I'm trying to build a build on my land, not become personality of the year, if it doesn't affect them then its really none of there business. I guess I'll have to wait and see on this if this is the right approach but I'm thinking the less fuss I make the less fuss they will make.