Has anyone had experience of buying land without planning permission, and then trying to get it?

[FannyPriceless]

That's it really. Just want to know if this is a ridiculous prospect or not.

There are a few plots of land for sale around here and the agents' details make it sound as though you could get PP. But surely that's a huge risk?

Has anyone done it? Or looked into this?

Hi Fanny
You don't like making life easy for yourself do you?!

Find out what local council the plot of land falls under and then contact their planning department (look at their website for phonenumbers etc). The majority of planning departments are very helpful and will help you where they can.

First off the person in the planning department will be able to tell you if the land comes under any sort of quirky or unusual rules when it comes to building on it. If it does they should be able to point you in the right direction about finding out more about those rules.

If they believe the land can be built on for living purposes you can then speak to them about what sort of building style they would expect to see or what is desirable (or not!) to put on that plot.

Some councils charge for these chats/consultation, but you're talking about a one off fee of £50 not anything horrendous. It is also a way of getting a feeling about what they are looking for, (and therefore eventually give permission for) so you can speak to an architect and get straight into a design which is mutually agreeable, ie you don't spend £3k on drawings for a glass and wood house of your dreams construction, but the council are actually looking for a brick bungalow - iyswim.

Some of the planning people can be a bit cagey and bit pompous, but if you actually massage their egos a bit and work with them, they seem to appreciate it and you can get lots of helpful advice.

Hope this helps in some way

Hi ILTMIMI! Yes, I'm trawling rightmove trying to work out how we are ever going to afford the sort of house we think we should be living in!

So have you tried this? Or do you know about planning from the other side of the fence, so to speak?

It just seems that if it were easy to get PP, the person selling the land would get outline planning first as they would then make so much more money on the sale. So are they just off loading something that is never likely to get it? Though a call to the council would establish that I suppose.

I presume it's the district council we want, not the county council?

it's worth investigating but i'd err on the side of caution. Land with outline PP sells for more and usually vendors will try to get this before putting it on the market. there could be a good reason why they haven't but iliketomoveit has given good advice about checking it out.

Have a look for the appropriate UDP (unitary development plan). That will tell you what use that land is allocated for. It can change, but once it's in the UDP it's hard to change.

Speak to the relevant council. They won't commit obviously, but usually if something is completely out of the question, they will tell you. I've not done this, but my DH has had several "off the record" indicative type conversations with the planning office when he has had various ideas and has found them helpful.

Still always a risk though!

Other posters above sound like they have some excellent tips - you need to be prepared to do some digging/ask lots of questions.

No we haven't done this exactly, but we did buy a small house which had adequate land to extend on, and we would only have wanted it if we could extend so we spoke to he council before we bought it. DH is also a builder and dabbles in doing architects drawings, so he has lots of experience of dealing with various planning offices.

I wouldn't worry too much yet about why it hasn't got outline pp on it, there may be all manner of reasons why it hasn't. Speak to the district council and see what they have to say, it should only take you a few phonecalls or emails to get some information which will give you can idea about the situation.

Hmmm... just looked a bit more closely at the agent's details for the one that most caught my eye. I realise now it is a land bank scheme. From the plan it looks like they have just bought a big piece of land speculatively and are selling off square chunks of it as investments. Crap. It did seem too good to be true.

Oh well, I will keep all of this advice in mind should I come across a genuine piece of land in my searching.

ILTMIMI What you did (buy a small house on a large plot) is actually what we are looking to do too. Have you done the extension?

We're still in the process of building the extension, as dh builds it at the weekends.

We doubled the size of the original house and actually getting a design and planning permission was the easy bit. Mostly because we live on a small estate in a small village that has a distinctive architectual look about it - so we knew the extension would have to be in keeping. We worked closely with the planning department and each time dh came up with a design we would take the sketch in to the council offices and get their opinion on it. Of course each planning officer had their spin on the 'rules', but basically we got a range of opinions and incorporated them into the design. Also when we submitted the application we wrote a covering letter explaining why certain design features had been put in - it showed that we had put thought, time and effort into impact on the neighbours and rules of design that we had to work to.

Working closely with the planning department can save you a lot of time and money.

If you buy land with property on it already, that is a good start. It is more likely that you can extend. But there still can be clauses that can cause a problem (for example it is on agricultural land) so it's always worth checking out.

Can I ask if you decided to go ahead? I am currently thinking about buying land without planning permission, and building "earthships" which have been given an exemption from planning permission in UK. They only cost around £7500 total to build, including grey water system, renewable energy sources and building materials.