Recent Grand Designs episode - Question about planning permission success

jimbo6977

You employ a “Planning Consultant”. What they do is sufficiently vague and sufficiently expensive that everything goes through smoothly. 

Davesnave

penguineater said:

Davesnave said:

Doozergirl said:

penguineater said:

Thanks for the replies @Davesnave and @davidmcn - you both seem to have answered my questions!

It gives me some hope that I may be able to have my own self build one day as long as I follow the correct steps and put a few grand on the line. Hopefully I can get a plot of land for a more reasonable price up here in the North East, something like £30k!

We bought a house with the potential plot a part of the 'garden'.

And we bought one out in the sticks with sme land and a 60' modern barn that no one thought would be much good for anything, except storage.

However, times change, so now it's a potential residence.

I'm not young and I've had enough of building, but my daughter's married an architect.........

Did you purchase this many years ago? I'm assuming there aren't going to be many cheap opportunities like that any longer?

11 years ago at the height of the recession. Grotty bungalow and barns + 5 acres. Guide price £250-£275k.

I think there are still opportunities, but they will probably not be in the most convenient places and all will involve some hard work to make them good to live in.

Doozergirl

princeofpounds said:

Hi OP, personally I think this is a pretty interesting question, and you've done some good work looking into a specific example.

The planning system is rather corrupt, and I don't mean that in the money-in-briefcase sense. Rather that policies that are meant to be objective and clear are rarely anything but, and you get plenty of cases along these lines where treatment appears to be inconsistent and, perhaps, unfair.

I know nothing of this particular council or this site, but I suspect the real meat of the change is outlined in the 'Principle' section of the planning report that accompanied the approval. I've copied the relevant section in italics below. The story appears to be that the council had a policy to refuse new development in open countryside (unless a local need is approved, which is usually linked to rural employment activity, not where people come from) or beyond approved settlement limits.

But two things changed between the refused application in 2016 and the approved application in 2019:
1) The council admitted it had not identified a 5yr supply of developable housing in a 2018 report
and 
2) The National Planning Policy Framework was updated in 2019 to state that where councils had failed to approve that 5yr supply, then the policies that restricted housing supply were out of date and should be ignored. At that point, the project can be judged on its own merits and as long as the adverse impacts were not significantly bad, the guidance is to approve it. That's where the eco-washing and the trendy architecture come in; it makes it easier for the planners to judge the impact as net positive. I don't blame them in a way; it something was going to happen on this site eventually, you'd jump at something like this rather than see another c*@p 3 bed box go up five years later.

Perhaps the original scheme would have passed by 2019, perhaps not. Who knows how the grand designs owner came to know about the plot, and about how planning policy was evolving. Given they bought in (presumably, early) 2019, perhaps they somehow understood the changes taking place and the old owner didn't. Perhaps 100k is the going rate for that land in a place like this; it's certainly above agricultural value. Or perhaps as someone else stated they took on some risk by committing to pay for an option without knowing if the decision would approved. Maybe they hired a planning consultant who used to work in that planning department and that helped 'shepherd' them through the second part of the decision.

"Principle The site is detached from any defined settlement limit as set out in the South Holland Local Plan (2006) and is therefore classed as being in the countryside. It is also located outside of any settlement boundary as set out in the South East Lincolnshire Local Plan (2019). Sites located in the countryside would normally be assessed against Policy HS7 in the South Holland Local Plan (2006). This policy only allows residential development in the open countryside where there is an essential need, or small scale rural exception affordable housing that complies with Local Plan Policy HS9. In that context, as the proposal is neither for rural exceptions affordable housing nor essential to meet the needs of agricultural workers, the recommendation would normally be to refuse. However, the Council does not currently have a 5-year supply of deliverable housing sites (4 years as at 31st March 2018). Paragraph 11 of the National Planning Policy Framework, 2019 (NPPF) states that where the local planning authority cannot demonstrate a five-year supply of deliverable housing sites, the most important policies for determining the application (i.e. those relating to the supply of housing) are considered out-of-date. Paragraph 11 of the NPPF is quite clear that permission should be granted unless any adverse impacts of doing so would significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits, when assessed against the policies outlined in the NPPF as a whole; or specific policies in the NPPF indicate that development should be restricted. Sustainable development is defined in paragraphs 7 and 8 of the NPPF as having three dimensions: economic, social and environmental. "

All of this.  I live in an area without a 5 year supply.   

We fought for 4 years to get permission to build on our brownfield site.  Next door they passed 6 new houses on greenfield back gardens that would usually be fiercely resisted, because they knew that they would get passed on appeal - because the council didn't have the 5 year supply. 

Every argument they came up with for us went out of the window.  If they didn't pass it, they'd end up being charged for the cost of the appeal.  

in_my_wellies

A recent case here involves a householder applying for permission to do work on trees in a conservation area. One of the trees to be felled is in the next door neighbours garden.
On ringing the council:
Apparently this OK, anyone can apply to have a tree felled in any garden
No neighbour notices need to be sent for 'tree works' (fortunately he was alerted)
Once plans are passed, which they are, the incorrect diagram of the border can't be changed so it looks like their tree

And to cap it all the applicant is also the consultee for planning on the council. So he signed off his own plans! Also not a problem according to the council. 

princeofpounds

in_my_wellies said:

A recent case here involves a householder applying for permission to do work on trees in a conservation area. One of the trees to be felled is in the next door neighbours garden.

You can get planning permission to put a multi-storey car park in Buckingham Palace's back garden, if it aligns with policy and the relevant officers/committee approve it. Doesn't mean you are allowed to do so as you don't own the land. Same with this tree - all it means is that the council won't object on planning grounds. 

That's not to say that this person didn't plan to do it and present it as a fait accompli, but they would lay themselves open to a civil claim and possibly criminal. 

Signing off you your own application sounds rather unusual... not sure if that's what would have happened; suspect this was an officer-level decision anyway.