Prior approval for permitted development refused. Can anyone explain?

rosie383

The annoying thing is that our plans are easily within the scope of PD. Apart from the old plans showing this old outhouse.
We were told that we could redraw the plans, so that the extension came within perhaps half a metre of the footprint of the non-existent outbuilding. Upon asking how I would even find out how big it was as it no longer exists, I was told to go and measure a neighbour's one. But they don't exist either!

As far as cost goes, there is no fee for prior approval application, but hefty fees for PP.
Is it significant that the decision was made within a day of application?

Doozergirl

What is the timescale for appeal?

And the timescale for planning? The planning application fee is something like £110 here.

I appreciate that it seems ridiculous, but you'd have to prove that the outbuilding didn't exist in the 1940s to get it passed on appeal. Precedent had nothing to do with a PD appeal as it is measured against the house as it stood in 1948, not your neighbours.

Precedent is what will see you get Planning Permission easily if your proposal is the same as the neighbours.

You don't know the potential outcome of an appeal, so if your appeal is dismissed, you're straight back to the beginning with the time and expanse of a failed appeal and a subsequent planning application.

May as well just go for full planning where you can be confident of the right outcome.

rosie383

Thanks DG. I had a look now and the fees for planning here are £178 so not as bad as I was thinking. There is no expense for an appeal, as far as I have been able to find out, but from what you are saying there may not be any point in even doing it as the outbuilding almost certainly would have been there in 1948.

Timewise we would prefer not to have any extra delay so we may decide not to waste our time going for the appeal. I still will try to speak to the local planning officer though as the government website suggests.

Can you explain how something like an old outbuilding on a house in 1948 is a realistic reason to refuse PD though? It really doesn't make any sense to me.

Doozergirl

All PD is judged against 1948. PD where the outbuilding is would only allow an extension half the width of that outbuilding at that point, probably.

It does seem overzealous to me. Normally the expectation is that houses are larger than they were in 1948, hence going back for reference, not smaller!

chappers

To help your case have a trawl through the planning portal website for your LA and see which others have been done under PD or via planning app.
To be honest £178 is nothing compared to the hassle of trying to get a decision overturned, especially when the officer concerned is probably technically correct.
If you get your architect to help you on this, it won't take many minutes of his time, before you are out of pocket anyway.

Hintza

Go in and see them. Always handy to by what rules they are playing and what they would allow.

rosie383

Quick update. Managed to speak to a very helpful gentleman in the local office. The new manager has come from a borough in London who don't allow any extensions more than half the width of the original building if there is or has ever been one of these old outbuildings.
Any plans submitted for PA up until a couple of months ago were all given approval. ALL similar applications are now being refused.
Thanks for the advice to check online Chappers. Very interesting to see that we aren't the only ones.

We ended up with a third option after my visit. There is currently another homeowner in our area who has an appeal in at the minute. Unofficially we were told that if they win the appeal, then we would be likely to be able to get them to change their decision at a local level. The only problem is that the appeal has been in for about five weeks and could take another couple of months. So if they lose the appeal, we would have lost all that time waiting.
So we have made the decision to pay up the £172 and just apply for PP so that we can go ahead with our planned timescale. There shouldn't be any reason to have PP refused as our neighbours and most of the other houses have single storey extensions already.

Thanks to all who tried to help. Much appreciated as always.

phil24_7

Glad you have come to a reasonable outcome. Sorry my help proved useless, I miss understood the prior approval element of your query. I should learn to do my homework first!

Just goes to show you can't believe everything on the internet! lol

Regards
Phil

rosie383

Thanks for trying Phil!