PLANNING AND BUILDING REGULATION APPROVALS

There are two Statutory Permissions that are required before your project can start construction. Planning and Building Control.

The main difference between these two:

  • Planning - whether the appearance, mass, form, siting etc. is acceptable.

  • Building Regulations - ensures that you are building to an accepted regulatory standard.

Elev The Barn.png

The first permission required is under the ‘Town and Country Planning’ Acts: An Application for Planning Permission. These applications are made to the Local Planning Authority [LPA], usually the Local Authority or Borough Council. We will submit these applications for you by the during Stage 3* of a commission when the drawings are sufficiently developed and the scheme design agreed with you.

Once planning permission has been granted, often with some conditions and directives imposed by the LPA, the project can continue its progress to Stage 4* ‘Technical Design’ which includes details submitted for Building Regulation Approval

With Building Regulations, under what is termed a ‘full plans’ procedure, the Local Authority (or private inspector) will initially overview and comment upon the drawings (‘Deposit Stage'). This first stage may be granted with various conditions requiring further information once further details are available. Sometimes this information can only be provided once the work has started on site (agreed depth of foundations is a typical example of this). Work can only take place once the initial ‘Deposit Stage’ has been approved, or for very simple work (requiring less technical drawings) an initial ‘Building Notice’ has been submitted to the Authority. Either way, building work can only commence on site once the Building Control Authority have received due notification. Once the work has commenced on site, stage inspections will take place to ensure compliance, culminating in a Completion Certificate (which usually has to be accompanied with various test certificates for services and the like). The fee payable to Building Control is therefore a 2-stage fee, which for home extensions is invariably based on the overall gross area of the proposed extension.

SecThe Barn.png

Further services/consultants:

  • Structural Engineer. An engineer is often required for the Building Regulation Submission. We may therefore have to brief a 3rd party engineer to provide calculations proving the structural design. This is needed at the ‘Deposit’ stage so that Building Control have all information, in the form of both drawings and calculations, to make their initial assessment.

  • Sewerage Works: Where works have an impact upon underground drainage we may also need to make contact with the relevant water authority in order to a sewer record (typically costing around £60).

  • Party Wall Act 1996. In addition to the above you may need to appoint a Party Wall Surveyor if the proposed works involve excavations close to a neighbour’s boundary or works directly affect the party wall. Should this be the case we will advise during Stage 1-2, provide further directives and, if required, liaise and provide the required information to the surveyor within our stage 4 Fee.

    [* See RIBA Client design ‘working with an architect for your home’]