Planning applications and appeals
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Are you looking for high quality advice about a major new development? Are you planning to build a new house or annex in your garden? Would you like to convert an old farm building into a rural dwelling?
We will help you to navigate the planning system and bring your plans to life.
Applications
We can become involved in the process at any stage. If we work on a planning application from start to finish, here’s what we would typically do:
This report provides guidance on how likely it is that you will get planning permission, what you are likely to get permission for, and your best strategy for obtaining it.
Councils offer informal pre-application advice which sets out their view on a potential planning application, for which they charge a relatively small fee compared with an application (the fee depends on the local authority and the type and size of development proposed).
This “pre-app” helps to stage your expenditure and minimise risk.
Vision Planning can produce the appropriate paperwork to get the answers you need, and then read between the lines of the response to work out the best strategy to get the outcome you want.
Vision Planning will produce documents such as the Planning Statement, normally a Design and Access Statement, and potentially others. Where appropriate, we will use specialists such as architects, ecologists, transport engineers, heritage experts, arboriculturalists or drainage engineers to produce some of the documents.
When you are happy with the planning application, we will submit it for you. There will be a fee payable to the Council at this stage. A Government fee calculator is available here: https://1app.planningportal.co.uk/FeeCalculator/Standalone?region=1
Planning applications often require contributions from specialist consultants dealing with, e.g. design, transport, biodiversity, heritage, trees, contamination etc.
If we think it’s necessary, we will let you know in good time and recommend some specialists to you. If you like, we can also manage their work on the application.
Whatever the size of a proposal, there are likely to be issues that need further discussion and negotiation with the planning application case officer. We will discuss the application with them and ensure that they have all the information to encourage them to make the right decision.
Most planning applications receive objections. We can respond to these objections, to explain to the Council why permission should still be granted.
Each Council has its own “rules of delegation”, which set out which planning applications are determined by officers and which are determined by a Committee of Councillors.
Normally, applications determined by Committee are for larger developments, proposals with lots of objections, and applications where the officer is minded to make a decision contrary to the parish council’s view.
In some cases, local ward members can call an application to Committee for their determination.
We can appear at Committee to present the planning application to the Committee members, to give you the best chance of getting a planning permission.
Appeals
Sometimes an application is refused, but it might be worth appealing. Our expertise in written representations, hearings and local public inquiries mean that we are ideally placed to help.
To find out how we can improve the chances of your proposal being approved by the local planning authority, please get in touch.
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