How to find a planning consultant

[CyberLilly]

We have just been refused planning permission, somewhat expected, which is fine but instead of going for changs our architect says appeal and then that's it over.

A bit of Internet searching suggests a planning consultant would be a good idea.

However how do I find one? I seem to have found town planners for developments, but residential seem to be architects and I have an architect albeit one that seems.cant help with planning!

Thanks

you either trust your architect or you don’t OP

your submitted plans knowing they would likely be rejected?

Look on the RTPI website - there should be a directory there.

Or have a look at the planning application pages on your council website - see if you can find some local agents who submit applications which are planning consultants.

A consultant who does development work will also do residential and householder appeals. Ideally you would be looking for a small firm/individual used to dealing with your Council and their policies

Trust the architect to to architectural work, but would you trust them to draw up your will, or do your tax return or extract a tooth? No - you need the right professional to do certain work. A planning consultant will submit a planning appeal.

Thanks for the messages which are helpful. Will look today.

I don't need to explain every tiny part of my post and why / how I wrote it to try and keep.it succinct but....

Plans were submitted and yes we trusted the architect and the process in that we could change aspects if got rejected. Lots get rejected here then go back with amendments.

However now architect is now saying appeal, expect it to fail, then you'll have to pull out of doing this.

Which isn't what they said initially.

And hence my post.

Never had heard of a planning consultant as our last and much more major submission got approved with no issue. (Different house)

Anyway thanks again for sensible replies.

That does sound a very strange approach from the architect! Have they explained why they don't think the scheme can be successfully amended? I don't know why they recommend appealing either if they think it will be unsuccessful.
A planning consultant should be able to offer advice on next steps.

Has the architect explained more? The grounds for refusal might indicate that there’s nothing you can do to get PP for what you want to do, so no amendments will make a difference. Sometimes the answer is just ‘no’. Be careful to explore this before spending big money on an appeal. Planning Inspectorate work to the same legislation as the local authority, so if there is a sound planning reason why you’ve been refused, there may be nothing you can do, and the architect might be offering you the best advice.

the architect has submitted something the op thought that it was unlikely to be accepted

and

which is fine but instead of going for changs our architect says appeal and then that's it over.

an architect shouldn’t be submitting design work that is likely to be rejected

Many applications are submitted for the ideal result, but fully expect it to be revised down during the process. There is always the hope that the original scheme may be accepted.

Talk to the planners and ask why the planning was rejected it's sometimes a pretty trivial problem and easy to change the design slightly.

We got a senior person in the planning department to come out and see our problem with the design, he agreed our solution was the only sensible way to go so approved the plans after all. No official appeal necessary.

Thanks again all.

Have a call with architect next week so no I don't know more than the email and they have not replied on my query about amendment.

I've started contacting companies I found per the advise here on RTPI website who are relatively close and not huge.

I'll also see how we can get a person to come visit as reccomended above. As some of the refusal comments look.cut and pasted and not that relevant to the situation of our house eg) "viewed from street" and you can't view it from street. However its pretty painful to get any in person contact!

More than happy if the answer is just a plain NO but I would have thought that would be called out initially.

Plus so many houses being knocked down and replaced with new and are surrounded by victoriana piles and our change is relatively minimal!

💯 accept I am also feeling a bit "not fair" to hear its this or nothing with no compromise in-between. I'd like to see that in writing.

Cheers all. Appreciate the responses

correct
but not where “likely” to be rejected as just wastes time and money

an optimistic plan is worth submitting
waste of time and money to submit one likely to fail

has your architect recommended any builders or planners?

This happened to us recently. Our architect recommended a planning consultancy who he works with that came highly recommended, so might be worth seeing if your architect can help? We also had a couple firms contact us directly but we didn't bother following up with them. The planning company had a look at our application and advised it was 50/50 whether the appeal would be successful. Their fee to manage it would be £1800! We decided to resubmit a scaled back design instead, hoping that gets through!

If you have been refused you can have another go for free as opposed to going straight to appeal.

Any refusal will have reasons. Learn more about this element first before going for the appeal route. It will cost less for one!

If you do wish to appoint a Planner look for a chartered one with MRTPI and use someone locally based. Even better ask around where you live to see any one has any recommendations.

We had planning refused (as our farm house is in the green belt). The architect appeared to have no idea that it might be a problem, very little knowledge about planning whatsoever.
The council planning dept agreed to meet with me to talk through the reasons for refusal, it was a useful meeting and they were clear that they were not going to approve any building in the green belt whatever it looked like so there weren’t any changes we could make to the plans etc.
We instructed a planning consultant from a large local solicitors firm and they found a way around it (by knocking down a nearby barn and adding the volume onto the house). It was expensive but the only way we would have got the extension we needed for our family to continue living here.
As a starting point I would ask for a meeting to better understand the issues and ask them outright if they think it’ll be passed with any suggested changes. You might just need to tweak the plans or they might be 100% sure it won’t go through, in which case it might be worth speaking to a planning expert for their opinion. Best of luck 🤞

did you carry on using the architect?

Some very odd replies here OP! Our plans were rejected, despite similar being granted on a substantially similar house (Victorian terrace) less than 1km away which just so happened to be in the next council over (SW London). In light of this I didn’t feel we were being unreasonable with what we applied for but luck of the draw meant we were unfortunately assigned a notoriously conservative case officer.

The free pass mentioned above is odd. Prior to officially rejecting our plans the case officer suggested to our architects that if we withdrew our plans and resubmitted they’d grant us a substantially different (but much more common) extension, which we didn’t want. So we took the rejection (which was then officially listed on the planning portal) and appealed.

Our architect put us in touch with four different specialists with a range of payment structures, including a no win no fee lot. The one we ultimately went with charged half upfront and the rest on successfully obtaining planning. It cost us £5,000 just pre-pandemic and took about 6 months - they put together a very robust 30+ page document making our case. Happy to share their name if you DM me - I would use them again.

The benefit of appealing is that your application is looked at on a national level (from their offices in Bristol) and, in my opinion, they take a much more pragmatic view to planning applications. Ours found, as I felt, that the two areas should indeed be treated as one given how similar the styles of houses are and granted us exactly what we applied for with no conditions.

The architect had already drawn up plans for the extension and they didn’t need to be changed at all, so we had no further need to continue with them.

his plans had been rejected though

They were refused on first submission but once re-submitted with additional legal information from the consultant they were approved. Basically the planning solicitor proved that a precedent had been set previously to allow a nearby building (a barn in our case) to be demolished and the volume added to the house, so they couldn’t refuse it.

Thats my understanding of what happened, I could be wrong as it was a few years ago. The extension was completed almost 2 years now.

The plans remained the same throughout. It was a green belt issue so probably a different situation to this one the op was asking about.

Thanks again all. Some of the ratio ale seems to be a "relatively" small front dormer for a loft stair. The next house along has a massive breadth of house box dormer and ours mirrors the victoriana style ones. All houses are different and detached and different eras. None sit directly next to each other so no "line" or indeed street view.

Hence I think a sme is beneficial in this case just to close it out either way.

Architect replied saying we could do amendments but what's the point. Clearly I am.missing something...... ie).shouldn't have bothered in first place! 😕

Thanks again

@GladiatorsFan thanks have PMd

Unfortunately there's no more free-go if the decision was issued after 06/12/23

OP does your council offer pre-application advice? It might be worth trying this process in addition to an appeal. You should be able to discuss with a case officer and they could offer advice about what changes could be made or what would be acceptable.

Architect replied saying we could do amendments but what's the point. Clearly I am.missing something...... ie).shouldn't have bothered in first place! 😕

this is all very odd