Introduction
Welcome to Part 2 of this series, where I’m taking you through the journey with me to build my dream home. In part 1, I gave a background on my property development career and how I got started. In today’s blog, I’ll be walking you through how I found the land for the site I’m currently working on and how I’m going about obtaining planning permission
Finding the Plot
For this site, It seems finding the plot is the easy bit, but getting planning to build on it would be challenging part.
I found the land through a brickwork contractor who was working on my last site. He mentioned a family friend had some land which might be suitable for housing and that the family friend was happy to grant him an option to buy the site, subject to planning.
However, he didn’t have any experience of how to get planning consent, so we put our heads together and agreed to try and develop the site together and both build a new home on the site .
I quickly found out the site is within the defined settlement boundary, as set out in the Local Plan. I have always only developed sites in the settlement boundary as there is a presumption in favour for development. While it is technically possible to get planning outside the settlement boundary, in my experience its significantly more difficult.
The land was also within the Conservation Area and as we were to find out later, within an area of Archeologic interest.
Having agreed a price for the land and signed the option agreement with the land owner we could focus the planning process.
Planning Permission
Now that the option agreement had been signed, we could confidently work on obtaining planning permission.
Any planning application will need a significant amount of work and technical reports prepared before being submitted. In this case we prepared the following:
- Topographical Survey
- Tree Survey
- Preliminary Environmental Assessment ( PEA )
- Preliminary roosting assessment (PRA )
- The Architect prepared proposed site plans and elevations.
- A design and access statement.
- A heritage report, as the site is in the conservation area.
- A detailed planning statement addressing all planning policies that are relevant.
- An Arboricultural Impact Assessment.
So kiss goodbye to at least £30,000 and make a thorough check of any additional documents the local authority will require to register your application.
What happens next will depend on how your application is perceived by the local residents and the planning officer, so consult with your neighbours in the design process to try and iron out objections early.
Nimbys are Nimbys though, so having a well-designed scheme that ticks the boxes in terms of planning policy is the best strategy to overcome unreasonable neighbours.
Once the application is lodged, there can only be 3 outcomes:
1. The application is approved.
2. The application is refused.
3. The application is not decided within 8 weeks.
If the application is approved
Congratulations! All that time and effort has paid off.
That land now has to be paid for and the timeframe in your purchase contract will be very tight!
If you secure planning and don’t complete the purchase in time, the landowner will ask you to join the queue of other bidders interested in buying the site, which will now have the benefit of planning consent and as such will be a lot more expensive.
Once the land is paid for, keep the celebrations short and don’t buy those new wellies yet because :
The planning approval will come with a list of planning conditions. Some conditions will have to be discharged / agreed with the local authority before work can commence on site, others can be discharged before you occupy the house.
In addition, now is the time to get you architect to prepare and submit building regulation drawings to the local authority building control section for “building regulation approval” This is an important document that confirms the materials and design of your new home meet the standard required.
The design and materials will also be used to assess your new properties EPC rating.
Now the work starts to turn your dreams into a forever home.
If the application is refused
It is going to be hard to take, but it isn’t over.
Planning is largely subjective and a planning officers’ opinion may well be very different to your own and may have been coloured by the opinion of idiots / nimby’s in the neighbourhood.
The decision notice will have specific reasons why the application was refused and you need to read these carefully and ask a planning consultant to read between the lines to see if a revised application will overcome the reasons for refusal.
It may have been refused because the local authority were not supplied with the information they needed to make a decision and this can be easily rectified. A typical example of this is a failure to supply detailed sightline drawings to demonstrate that you can drive onto the public road safely.
Equally it may have been refused because the planning officer thinks it’s too big, or out of character. To you it will be blindingly obvious they are wrong.
Fortunately you have the option to appeal against their decision to The Planning Inspectorate, who are completely independent of the local politics, and will look at the proposal purely in planning policy terms and statistics show you have a good chance of success, but you will need a good planning consultant.
At least 70% of all the planning applications I have made were decided at appeal by The Planning Inspectorate. Of those, about 70% were approved after they had been initially refused by the local authority.
Don’t be intimidated or put off. You have 6 months to lodge an appeal, which gives you plenty of time to take advice and regroup.
If the application is undecided
This is usually the case for a new self-build house as there is a lot of information and a lot of bureaucracy for the local authority to deal with. The local authority will write to all your neighbours and inform them of the application and the local busy body will have taken details of the planning application notice that you are required to display at the front of the property.
Your local councillor, together with the planning committee will be the people who ultimately decide on the planning application, so if you managed to speak to them in your consultation process, well done, they will have an understanding of your point of view.
The important thing to do is to stay in regular contact with the planning officer, which can be a challenge in itself. They will give you feedback about any additional information they need or outline issues they feel may prevent the application being approved.
The local authority may ask you for an extension to the 8 week statutory period, which I would advise you to agree to, and continue to monitor the progress of the application.
If there is a particular issue the local authority don’t like, you can amend the application by submitting revised drawings to overcome the issue. Even if you don’t like the proposed amendments, having a consent is very valuable and a big step forwards towards your end goal.
If, after your patience has long since expired and there is still no decision looking likely, you can appeal the application to the Planning Inspectorate for “non determination”.
An appeal process can be 12 months long due to their workload, but effectively you will need to get a planning consultant to submit an appeal statement for you, setting out your case. The local authority will also submit their opinion and you will get a copy of this which will say if they would have approved the application or refused it, and why.
And that ladies and gentlemen is exactly where I am with my site in Alton. The local authority had the application for 6 months and did little to progress it, so I have appealed to The Planning Inspectorate to make the decision for them.
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David
