OK. I officially give up trying to apply for planning permission.

[Tansie]

I am going to have to pay an architect to get our single integral grange conversion into a living room through planning. It will cost me £800. Trawling through the Planning Portal and the Local Council site has possibly taken a week of my time and I just can't do it.

I do not know what a 'planning statement' is, what it should state. I do not know why one is mandatory.

I do not know why I need a biodiversity statement.

I do not know why I need to state how many employees my garage conversion will employ and what its opening hours will be.......

I do not know why I have to make an Affordable Housing statement. For my garage conversion.

Now, having spend many, many hours on it, I can no longer find which subsection of which subsection tells me what scale the 15 odd maps and plans I have to supply have to be.

I am close to tears with pure frustration.

Tansie, my architect cost £360 for a double garage conversion and a kitchen extension, both went on the same planning app.

As you have had your permitted development rights removed like I have the planning permission charge is free

Has anyone else on your estate converted a garage? If they have can you look at their planning application form to see what they have written?

I had a look at mine and none of mine has anything about hazardous waste or opening hours My form is a "Householder Application for Planning Permission for works or extension to a dwelling, Town and Country Planning Act 1990" is yours?

The 2 drawings given to the Council were one with a plan of my house existing and proposed, it also included the front, back and side drawings. Then the other plan we submitted was the one from land registry when we bought it 6 months prior to doing the work, this teeny plan was cropped from the main A4 sheet and popped onto the corner of the drawing. It is marked down at the same scale as on the land registry which was 1:1250

You really shouldn't have the opening hours or hazardous waste questions. They are from the full application forms.

Fizzy's description of what she needed sounds absolutely spot on to me. You really don't need anything else.

The Environment Agency aren't interested in householder apps, so you will definitely not need a FRA, no matter which flood zone you are in (but you can find this out easily on the EA's website).

Lol.

Actually, given that the newly formed living room will 'house' 2 teenage boys, maybe I do need to consider 'hazardous waste'!

As for roof plans, glad you mention it- I was thinking roof drawings and again was going to use the 'before/existing' ones from the earlier PP. Mm. Roof plans. Why?!

Drawings / plans same stuff, different name. And I also think you still have the wrong form (and still questioning whether you need pp at all)

Roof plans - as you're not changing anything (as I understand it) yes, you can use the old plans.

Re teenage boys - have yet to experience that - but I'm sure they would fall under those requirements. Might need a noise survey too.

Only - PD rights have been taken away - which means you don't have the PD rights to do this work and have to apply for pp even though most people don't.

Yes, that's right (re PP). I do need it as our PD rights have been removed.

I was lead on a wild goose chase by the Planning Portal as I ticked 'I do not know what sort of PP I need' and was directed to several y/n questions, the result of which said -'You need Full PP'; hence the hazardous waste/number of employees/size of the plot (which I bloody well measured by hand in the rain, thanks!)/ provision for affordable housing/opening hours etc etc shenanigans. This was further reinforced in my mind by the fact that all the PP applications I (and you) can readily view online on the local council's website for more or less identical developments have been serial-numbered and stamped by the Council as "xxxxxx/FULLS". This apparently means Full householder PP sought. Who knew?!

I do need a FRA, too (see my post of 8.40am today). I've listed exactly what to Council want from their Householder PP checklist.

I confess to being amused when I followed the Council's link to a pdf designed to help me with the 'Design and Access statement'- the preamble basically knuckle-raps councils for ridiculously rigid interpretation of the new rules (post the relaxation of PP a few years ago) saying they were to follow the spirit of the law, not the letter, and that refusing PP on a ridiculous technicality wasn't acceptable! (I paraphrase, of course, but it goes to show what goes on if you do choose to ignore FRAs and Biodiversity assessments! Even the official publications are irritated with the pedantry of some Councils PP depts!)

I have had an entire planning application returned to me (second class, with delay in returning too) because I had failed to complete the form that said my client was not a member of or related to anyone in the Council. A phone call would have been cheaper than that and I could have faxed it over...

To some extent, I can understand why they would like a FRA - because you could live near a river, and your garage could be several feet lower than your house - and it could have been designed to cope with being flooded as part of the original design - but you can look on the Environment Agency Map and work out what risk there is of your house flooding - and you might even be able to get hold of a copy of the original one submitted on your development as a whole, if it was within the last few years. Alternatively, you could give up trying to submit it on line and send it in by hand without the FRA on the basis that if the rest of your house is OK, the garage (at the same level) will be so its a silly requirement.....

I can't get this to open on the iPad but this is the EA standing advice on flood risk. environment-agency.gov.uk/static/documents/Business/FRSA_LPA_v_3.1.pdf click me

I have looked at your Council's local requirements list and you only need a FRA when you would usually. So if the EA standing advice says you don't need one, you don't need one.

Sorry that link doesn't work, bloody iPad. Try www.environment-agency.gov.uk/static/documents/Business/FRSA_LPA_v_3.1.pdf

I presume you mean pd rights taken away by means of condition on a planning permission or by article 4 direction. Both of which would be pretty specific.

If you are not in a conservation area it is more likely to be by condition that article 4 direction. Do you know what the condition actually says?

Tansie, I have looked at your Council's website and the link below is the exact same application form I had to fill in for my garage conversion

this

Section 8 for will this affect parking, my architect ticked "yes" then written garage conversion, can park 3 cars to front.

Section 10 "material" mine just says existing "facing brick" proposed "facing brickwork to match existing"

Roof "conc tiles" in existing again proposed to match although no alteration was made to the roof. I replaced 2 garage doors with windows to match in with existing windows to the front.

Section 11 the very top part is signed by the architect then everything else underneath in section 11 is crossed through, as is 12, then 13 is blank.

Section 17 Can the site be seen from a public road... he has ticked Yes and No, and written extension next to the no part as that is on the back of my house.

Hope this helps, if you are like me with a new build (mine is 13 years old) pull the old files for the estate and surely you can use those existing plans without having to do any new ones.

Thanks. I shall trawl through it over the weekend. That is, indeed the form I have to fill!

Fortunately, the FRA isn't too onerous (thanks for the map link, floss). I expect I can print out a relevant map to show that my property is -er- just on the very edge of the limit of a severe flood! This was a broad leaf woodland til 15 years ago with streams etc through it (and, interestingly, in the woods, the site of a Iron Age village not 50m from my door...). Much of the woodland has been retained which is nice.

The developers have built a series of 'balancing ponds' with sluices to control the water level, but I'm not sure how old the EA maps are in this regard.

I am hoping the plans in my deeds will be useful so I don't have to fork out for new stuff. One company, 'recommended' by the Planning Portal, charges £1 for each time you look at your map! Cheeky buggers.

How old is the estate? Might you be able to see the original FRA?

HOwever, looking at the checklist, there is an option to say 'no' and why a FRA has not been included: I would tick 'no' here and say that this is a conversion of a garage to a room which will be at the same level as the rest of the house, there is no additional area of building or hardstanding that will increase the risk of flooding, and that it is no more at risk than the rest of your existing house.

If they say that they do need one, you can always do one at that stage (not quite sure what additional information you might give them mind you!)

i dont think You don't need pp, instead you need relief from a planning condition - similar but different process.

You can ask to have the fee waived as by removing permitted development rights they have put you at a disadvantage.

www.testvalley.gov.uk/resident/planningandbuildingcontrol/formsfees/applicationfollowingapproval/application-removal-variation-condition-following/

I think this is the form, if you pm me I might be able to point you in the direction of a cheap Hampshire architect/panning agent for plans, or show you mine for same application!

www.testvalley.gov.uk/resident/planningandbuildingcontrol/formsfees/applicationfollowingapproval/application-removal-variation-condition-following/

Useful page, thanks very much. I have also PM'ed you.

Whilst I'm sure I will have plenty more to add, I just wanted to thank everyone who's contributed on here. I was (as you can tell ) very despondent when I started this thread. I was so frustrated at the circles I was going in and the totally ridiculous questions I was apparently required to answer. I am irritated that the Planning Portal lead me down that garden path- and at my own inability to sort it! I mean, I personally advertised and sold my own house inc the legals not so very long ago and here I am getting completely bogged down with a simple garage conversion!

You do need planning permission if PD rights are removed as variation / removal of condition is still an application for planning permission.

Removal of condition means you would effectively be applying for the whole estate to be able to convert their garages without the need for pp. Variation of condition is also possible in theory but is more expensive (£170 as opposed to £150) and complex as you would need to identify that you wanted to vary the condition which relates to the whole estate in respect of your property only. You would need to find out what that condition was, what pp it related to, what it said and what you wanted to vary it to.

Much, much simpler to apply for householder pp for a garage conversion.

Yes, it strikes me that I'd be better off just applying for my own PP.

I'm pretty sure I'd get it without a fuss.

Anyway, I spent yesterday, with DH building an outdoor log store, installing it then emptying the logs out of the shed into it to make room in the shed for 2 shelf units from the garage to put stuff from the garage in the shed. Honestly, it's musical rooms around here! We started by getting the loft boarded to shift loads of stuff up there (camping gear, wetsuits, currently 'not used' furniture, packing boxes and materials, empty Lego boxes (think 'resale'!), the Xmas and Halloween decorations, photos (we go back pre-digital by quite a long way) etc), so this little room conversion has had ripple effects for the whole house. We've been in it 2 1/2 years but, like with everyone there's a history- in our case, combining and sorting the contents of 2 houses when we sold our old home abroad and shifted the detritus from that to the UK to join all the 'new' stuff we'd bought here!

I'll let you know how I go with the PP, and I have a builder coming tomorrow to quote.

Argh! Another stumbling block.

It's the Biodiversity Checklist (fgs!). I have to answer whether there is a SINC (a Site of Importance for Nature Conservation) within 50 m of my estate house. Well, there's a designated (as far as I can tell on a English Nature map of SE UK) 'Ancient Woodland' < 50m from my house as this modern estate was built in, around and through an old broadleaf woodland. So I go to the site the Council direct me to, and it's page after page of blurb, but is there an actual map to tell me IF my woods are a SINC? No. So I email them, a) asking and b) suggesting it just might be useful if they include such a map on their website. The automated response tells me that, due to government cutbacks, there may be a charge for information and that I should call in at their offices in a town 9 miles away to find out if there's a charge, so I can come home, pay it and submit my bloody question. But the office is closed for August due to staff annual leave.

I am going to tick 'no' to the SINC bit on the PP. My internal garage conversion will not destroy the habitat of any toad or bat.

And guess what? I need PP and Building Regs.

There's about £500 in fees alone!

Has anyone else on the estate got permission for the same thing? I say this as if a condition was put on the entire estate which protects garages for use as parking motor vehicles, it may be quite difficult to get permission without significant mitigating factors. Ie you would need to provide an additional parking space from somewhere to overcome the reason for the condition. It would also be more likely if you could prove exceptional individual circumstances. Eg. You need to convert for a medical need.

Other houses on the estate have done more or less what we're doing. We already have 2 off road parking spaces on our own driveway, so that won't be an issue.

Our 'complicating' factor is our desire to subdivide the garage into a living room and 'garage store', a wall that needs to be fire proof. So we need BR/BN not just PP!

WELL, here I am, 2 months down the line.

Funny old thing happened. After maybe 8 calls to the local council, querying this and that, with a full description of what I wanted to do each time, I sent in my application plus £150.

They call us to say 'Um, because the PDR have been removed from your estate, there's no fee' (I did ask where it says that on their website but they didn't know...)

I get another call telling me Highways have objected as apparently now a 4 bedroom house must have three off road parking spots.... BUT I get another call from the planning officer saying I don't. need. planning. permission. for. this.

All that time and hassle, hours of drawing this, measuring that, scaling the other, plus £20 for new OS maps (which don't show our boundary anyway ).

She couldn't explain why no one at the council had picked up on the fact my alteration wouldn't attract PP (though if we were turning the up and over door into a bay window, we would have...)

Anyway, she's going to let the PP run, whilst overriding Highways, but did mention the 'way' to do it was basically covertly, then if we lived in the house for 4 more years, PP was assumed!!

But I wanted to do it properly (hence all the jeffing shenanigans and hours of wasted time getting PP), so I had to apply for a Building Notice; and even that form said 'Cost:....', then '+VAT:...', 'Total:...' so I took £319.50, added 18.5%, wrote them a cheque- then they returned it saying it was only £319.50 (SO why the 'ecking '+VAT' bit???)

So anyway, we found a builder who actually didn't need 3D plans to stick Celotex to the floor and 2 walls, build a block wall and dot and daub plasterboard onto the inside of the new cube, and bash through and fit a window. Fancy!

Hoo-bleedin'-ray.