Planning Permission - building line query

[winkywinkola]

I'm just wondering if anybody could explain some things about building lines to me before I start shelling out on planning advisors. I live in Buckinghamshire.

We live in a house on a road perpendicular to a village. Our house is classed as part of the village. The village is very close to a big town and other villages.

There is a cluster of houses at either end of our road. We don't have a neighbour for 0.5km on either side of us.

We live in a house that sits on an acre plot of land. Very nice but too big for us to manage really. We would be happy with 1/3 less.

I would like to build two new homes at the bottom of our garden. They would have decent sized gardens and parking. They would access via the side of our house. I've seen this arrangement quite a few times in surrounding villages.

Dh says we wouldn't get pp because of the building line - i.e. where I propose to build two houses, there are no other houses in line on our road. I think it's just fields until you get to the bottom and top of our road and there are houses on roads that you turn left and right onto, if you see what I mean.

On the other side of the road, there are buildings (homes and farms) set further back from the road.

There used to be a large workshop at the bottom of our garden. It was ugly and useless to us so we demolished it. Once we'd cleared it and the all the brambles that had grown up around it, we were surprised and intimidated to discover it had revealed over 100sqm. Yikes! Anyway, would the fact that a building of some sort had already been built there before have any bearing on the likelihood of getting pp?

It's going to completely out me but who cares. Our road is New Road and we live halfway up it past the golf course on the left hand side.

You need to do a bit of investigation into the planning policies of your local authority.
You should be able to look at planning guidance documents on your LA website.
You need to find a development designation /land usage map for your area - to see if any development limits apply.
There may be policies about infill development, village development or rural development, housing development and change of use policies within your LAs development plan.

Thanks Wonkylegs. I've been looking and looking and I can't find anything relating in particular to my question.

I called them and they said that I would have to submit some sort of pre planning application in order for them to evaluate the situation.

I guess I will have to spend some money then to try and get a pre planning application in order to find out. Unless I use an independent planning advisor?

if you are outside the village confines boundary you would not normally get planning permission unless possibly if you were building affordable housing. If there was a building there like a barn you might have been able to get planning consent for a barn conversion. I am not sure what the rules are now you have knocked it down. Pre-app advice in our county (Northants) is about £120 which I would guess is cheaper than a planning advisor. I am a Parish Clerk and frequently see agents put in applications for developments which clearly contravene planning policy. I don't think Bucks has a new Local Plan passed yet so you need to look for the saved policies of 2007 under the old plan on Aylesbury Vale's website.

Thanks for this.

Maybe I should just contact developers and let them do the leg work instead.

Hi Winky, I'm an architect not far from you and have been dealing with Aylesbury Vale council on a couple of schemes lately, they have just had their Strategic Plan rejected I believe so you can still continue to refer to existing documents.

You need to make a pre app showing at least a basic scheme of what you want to do. You don't need to have a full set of drawings but at least a site plan showing where you would like to locate the houses. Obviously the more information you can provide the more detailed response you can get from the planning officer. You could do this yourself so it would only cost you the price of the pre app. The costs are available on their website or just call the planning department and ask them how much it will be.

Thanks SmallPrint.

Just out of interest how much would you charge to do a set of basic drawings?

Also, I'm thinking about making a detached house into a semi detached by building a new house next to it.

Will this massively decrease the value of the original house?

I'm really not touting for business, just trying to give you some advice to keep costs down for you.

With regard to semi vs detached I guess it will depend on the values of properties in the area against build costs. Speaking to a local EA will help you on that.