Very confused newby!

^woody^ · 19 May 2015

Fistly speak with the planners informally. See what records they have. Some councils are helpful, some not so. But you should be able to ascertain planning history and if they have an opinion on the building, and its likely use.

If you are lucky a helpful planner may give some good advice. eg sometimes, its easier to knock a building down and rebuild it to a prescribed use, and it may be that a planner can say that they would not be adverse to that happing in that location

Then if you want to, apply for the LDC. But be sure to have supporting information and a strong case first.

A planner is probably not bothered if you tell them that you will be applying for an LDC or not. In fact they might be more inclined to tell you to.

A wooden shell may need some work to get it through building regulations and to make it safe, weathertight, and to a habitable standard. Fitting a kitchen or bathroom wont affect any planned application, but it may attract an enforcement notice from planners or building regulation inspectors

SimonH2 · 20 May 2015

A tip for replying ...
If you hit quote, you'll get the message you are replying to already quoted. You can trim/edit this as long as you leave the opening and closing tags (quote ...) and (/quote) intact.
If you want to reply point by point, simply add more (quote) and (/quote) tags.

So you end up with :
(quote...)stuff(/quote)
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NB I've replaced the square brackets used in the tags with round ones so the board software won't try and interpret them instead of showing them as text.

Markwoody73 · 20 May 2015

^woody^ said:
A wooden shell may need some work to get it through building regulations and to make it safe, weathertight, and to a habitable standard. Fitting a kitchen or bathroom wont affect any planned application, but it may attract an enforcement notice from planners or building regulation inspectors

Thank you for this. As I've explained before, I'm wet behind the ears on this.....what is an enforcement notice??

Markwoody73 · 20 May 2015

UPDATE

I missed speaking to a duty officer, but another planner said that I should apply for retrospective planning.....

Does anybody have any knowledge of this??

SimonH2 · 20 May 2015

Of course they'd like you to apply for planning.

There are numerous other threads in here where planners will tell someone that they need to apply for planning - even for things where it's absolutely completely and uncontestably Permitted Development. There are also plenty of threads about planners "making things up" and stating the rules as how they'd like them to be.
Their job relies on people applying for planning permission, them telling people they don't need permission is like turkeys voting for Christmas.

So take anything they tell you with a pinch of salt if you believe you don't need planning.

Applying for retrospective planning permission is basically admitting that you need permission and giving them an opportunity to refuse it or apply restrictions.

An enforcement notice is where you receive a letter from the planners telling you that you have something that needs planning but you don't have it. It's the start of a process that ends in one of 3 ways :
1) You show that you either have permission or don't need it
2) You get permission
3) neither of the above and you become one of the cases shown on TV where the council come round and demolish your new house
(or some variation/combination of the above)

HERTS P&D · 20 May 2015

Hi Woody, I have just sent you a PM.

Andy

^woody^ · 21 May 2015

HERTSDRAINAGE2010 said:
Hi Woody, I have just sent you a PM.

Andy

Me? Or the newbie above

I've not received anything.

HERTS P&D · 21 May 2015

Hi Woody, I did send you a message last night, not sure where it went if you didn't get it.

It was regarding a planning application saying 'invalid' on the council website and I just wanted to know what was wrong. I am waiting for an architect to get back to me.

Andy

^woody^ · 21 May 2015

HERTSDRAINAGE2010 said:
It was regarding a planning application saying 'invalid'

Andy

Invalid means that something is missing from the application preventing the council from registering it. It might be a document, or if like me, it's normally a north arrow on the location plan

There is a national and a local validation criteria, which sets out what documents and information are required for particular type of applications. The council can't register an application without all these.

Parrotface · 1 Jun 2015

Just to give an update to this thread....

I have been delving more into the history of the building and there is a news article in the local rag about it, that it was lived in and then used as a summer house...even the local councillor got involved as previous buyers of the main house were going to pull it down (they didn't end up buying the main house)

By chance, I contacted an old tenant whom had a bed delivered here (numbskull) and I traced him online. He lived here with his parents as tenants and they used it for accommodation too....

I thought this was enough in the way of evidence, so have contacted the building control department who will be coming over next week to take a look as I told them about the case that I'd like to make this fireproof when we have guests in summer - is this a good move?

Parrotface · 1 Jun 2015

Anybody?

^woody^ · 1 Jun 2015

You've got the building control officer coming around, but what are you doing about the planning permission?

SimonH2 · 2 Jun 2015

As Woody says, what about planning ?
To make it clear, Building Control and Planning are two separate functions.

Planning are there to control WHAT you can build - basically their job is to restrict what is built.
Building Control are there to make sure that what you build will stay up - ie they control HOW it's built (structurally sound, complies with requirements for safety, energy efficiency, etc).

While the BC officer may have views on what the planners might say, he is not a planner. Similarly, the planners may have some suggestions regarding how to build stuff, but they are not Building Control officers.
From "anecdotes" here, it seems that they really are two different departments, who generally don't talk to each other, and sometimes makes mutually incompatible demands - eg planners demand you incorporate X, while building control point out that X doesn't permit you to comply with BC regs

jeds · 2 Jun 2015

Have you decided to risk proceeding or are you thinking of applying for a LDC?

Parrotface · 2 Jun 2015

I here you both.

As I listed in my update, new information surfaced regarding the continued use of the place up until we moved in and even since we have used it, but not for overnight.

I thought that had I have had a knock on the door, all of the relevant new information would appease the planners?

I distrust authority, and am quite loathed to get involved with planning when by all accounts I'm legal anyway....

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Very confused newby!

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