New Build Planning Frustrations

[Havkey100]

Yes, we have already advised that this would be our course of action. Back at the parish planning committee today, we are hoping for a recommendation for approval as opposed to no objection from them, as they in some ways gate keep the subjective elements of local design. If they are satisfied then it all adds up. We have a lot of supporting comments on there now, probably a dozen or so. No further objections thus far during the re-consultation.

Edited June 18 by Havkey100

[Indy]

2 hours ago, Dave Jones said:

 

they wont care means nothing to them. been there done that.

 

Exactly this. There is virtually no impact to the case officer if you do appeal.

 

What happens is that your appeal application goes into a 3m validation window, after which it usually takes between 6 and 9m for a decision to be taken.

 

The only impact I see is when the LPA has to respond to the appeal and its usually a templated response that can be thrown together in less than a day from their side. If you win, no skin off their nose but they can tell their superiors that they tried to fight it. Impact on your life on the other hand is almost up to a year of waiting.

 

[Havkey100]

Indeed. We have a refurbed house almost ready to sell, but can't do that until we have planning in order to set boundaries etc... We have had good offers for the full site from us, but that is not why were are doing this.

[Havkey100]

Recommendation for refusal. We are hoping to get it to committee but will see.

 

Material mistakes in the recommendation, including wrong height of the proposal, contradictions and piecemeal application of technical guidance on residential amenity.

 

Highly frustrating...

 

 

[Havkey100]

To start with:

 

5.22 Due to the dominant and overbearing impact upon (bungalow), the proposal does not comply with CS1 or PSP8

 

5.26 The proposal is considered to be acceptable in terms of residential amenity, and is in accordance with policies PSP8 and PSP43.

[Jilly]

On 11/06/2024 at 18:46, Alan Ambrose said:

Lots of people can't 'imagine' in 3D very well from 2D drawings.

Just shows it’s so subjective and a matter of luck. There have been single house developments near me , where people have expressed surprise at the size after the event, but didn’t look into it/ care enough to complain before. 

[Havkey100]

Good news is that my district councillor is calling it to planning committee.

 

 

[Alan Ambrose]

>>> Good news is that my district councillor is calling it to planning committee.

 

Nice, good luck  Keep us posted.

[Kelvin]

23 hours ago, Jilly said:

Just shows it’s so subjective and a matter of luck. There have been single house developments near me , where people have expressed surprise at the size after the event, but didn’t look into it/ care enough to complain before. 

I’ve had a few comments about the garage being so ‘massive’ and much bigger than how it was drawn and what people were expecting. Whereas  it’s actually smaller and the ridge height lower than the planning drawings so much so I have to submit an amendment. 

[ToughButterCup]

On 03/07/2024 at 17:57, Kelvin said:

I’ve had a few comments about the ...

 

" That's an interesting thing to say"

 

Smile move on.

[joe90]

On 03/07/2024 at 17:57, Kelvin said:

I’ve had a few comments

From who?

[Kelvin]

6 hours ago, joe90 said:

From who?

My only immediate neighbour. He doesn’t live at the house. Comes up every 6 weeks or so. A couple of other people (passers by who live in the area) were surprised we got planning permission for such a big garage. Several comments about what I’m going to do with it etc 

[joe90]

1 hour ago, Kelvin said:

My only immediate neighbour. He doesn’t live at the house. Comes up every 6 weeks or so.

But were they valid objections or just NIMBYism, I had a neighbour who complained about everything I did but his objections were not valid and ignored in the end. 

[Kelvin]

As legit as any complaint when a building has already achieved  planning permission. 

[Havkey100]

Really can't make this up now. The district councillor referred this to the planning committee. The chair of said committee has now rejected this request because:

 

"3-desion does not appear finely balanced"

 

So mistakes in the officers report on the height of the proposal in relationship to the neighbour, reliance on a subjective element of planning policy to argue overbearing effects, contradictory statements in the report around compliance with policy, support of the parish is not enough....

[Havkey100]

Formal refusal received today. Have already got my appeal document drafted and ready for a review by a planning consultant and our architect. The planning consultant had already initially reviewed the decision and feels it is all a bit bizarre.

 

We are mulling whether or not to in parallel submit a revised design, but given we believe we currently comply with all policies, we may still find we are refused again without a compelling reason based on policy.

 

[joe90]

I think you must ask yourself would you be happy to live in a single story build as required by the planers?

as I posted earlier my LPA wanted a 1.5 story build which I would have accepted rather than throw the towel in. The ground floor was exactly the same so whilst the appeal was progressing we applied for 1.5 story build, passed and started the build. We won the appeal before we got to first floor level. If we lost we would have built the top floor as per that the  planners passed.

 

i still think you have a good chance of winning your appeal.

Edited July 11 by joe90

[Alan Ambrose]

Commiserations, how annoying.

[Havkey100]

Thanks all.

 

Joe, on your point, the issue we faced was the following rejected application nearby:

 

xxxx Lane streetscene appear to exclusively consist of two storey dwellinghouses. Whilst the proposed dwelling would contain a first floor, it is proposed to be constructed in a dormer bungalow style, and would be of a

reduced height when compared to the host. There do not appear to be any other properties constructed in a similar style in the immediate area, and in this respect, it is considered that the proposed dwelling would appear as an out of character addition.

 

This is 30m from our site and the planners stated clearly they preferred 2 storey dwellings 2 years ago. We raised this with the case officer.

 

Absolutely no consistency

Edited July 12 by Havkey100

[joe90]

8 minutes ago, Havkey100 said:

Absolutely no consistency

I agree, creating a dormer style 2 story is a compromise between a “house” and “bungalow” therefore fitting in with surrounding properties 🤷‍♂️ feckng planners I hate them.

 

[Havkey100]

Planning appeal now submitted. Speaking with the consultant we are looking at 4-6 months of a delay based on what they are seeing in the area. The consultant is confident that we have a very strong basis for appeal.

 

On prepping the appeal it really puts into cold hard light how the planning department have had to work hard to find a reason to refuse permission. They are required to apply an overall planning balance and should have given weight to the sensitivity we had placed across the design, orientation, scale and mass. Instead they have ignored every area where we excelled in design and effectively pointed to one subsection of a technical advise note, made a subjective judgement that it should be applied, and then used that as the entire basis for refusal.

 

From their own guidance:

 

"Determining planning applications and considering enforcement investigations is a process
of balancing and mitigating the impacts of development. In order to do this, Planning
Officers apply varying degrees of weight to different aspects of the development
depending on the level of harm. Therefore, it should not be assumed that a proposal
which fails to meet all, some, or even any of the above tests would be refused. An
application would only be refused when, on balance and in the public interest, the
cumulative impact of the development outweighs the benefits."

 

Hopefully we will have better news around Christmas...

[Alan Ambrose]

I hope your appeal is processed swiftly. Mine is coming up to 1 year on Friday.

[Havkey100]

Any particular reason for the delay?

[Alan Ambrose]

@Havkey100

 

Not any obvious ones. Final comments were in March, the same as two other appellants that have posted here on BH and have their decisions already. So, from 3 the appeals I've been tracking, the timescale is (1) varying delay of ~3.5-5 months before the inspectorate decides to 'validate' ... then the appeal 'starts', (b) a fixed schedule of ~7 weeks for statements, comments etc, (c) a variable delay of ~5 months why they decide.

 

However, I received 5 very similar curious and slightly baffling emails from the inspector yesterday. It appears that nearly a year later, and despite 'validation', he asked about a week ago the LPA to supply some policy documents that they have refered too in their statement of case. The inspector has asked for my comments. He didn't actually say why, but I assume this is because these docs are nominally 'new evidence'. Would I be allowed to supply new documents at this late stage or would I be penalised for failing to provide them? I'll leave you to judge. The LPA also blatently ignored the Procedural Guide doc which lists a couple of things the LPA 'must' do ... and that the LPA simply ignored. When I queried this, the inspector said the equivalent of 'oh well, we can't make them'.

 

So, the good news is that there is some action, the bad news that it's not certain how far they have actually got.

[joe90]

6 minutes ago, Alan Ambrose said:

The LPA also blatently ignored the Procedural Guide doc which lists a couple of things the LPA 'must' do .

When I did my appeal I looked into compensation and found that if the LPA don’t abide by procedure you can claim compensation, however you can’t claim if their”  interpretation “ is different. Might be worth looking into.