Planning permission, Building Regulations, conversions and extensions, explained the way we'd explain them at your kitchen table.
You've decided you want to extend, convert or build something, and somebody has told you that you need an architect. So you've looked at a few websites, maybe had a bit of a shock at the fees, and now you're wondering whether there's another way to get the drawings done and the approvals sorted without spending thousands before a single brick gets laid.
You have got your heart set on extending the house, or maybe you have bought a plot and you are planning a new build, and then somebody mentions that there is a tree preservation order on the site. Suddenly you are not sure whether you can build at all, whether the tree has to stay exactly where it is, or whether there is a process to deal with it. In Derbyshire, where a lot of properties back onto mature woodland or sit on older plots with established trees, this comes up more often than you would think.
If you are having building work done on your property, whether that is an extension, a conversion, a new build or even a significant internal alteration, there is a set of regulations called CDM that applies to your project. Most homeowners have never heard of them, most builders know they exist but are hazy on the detail, and the result is that the legal duties CDM places on you as the person paying for the work often go completely unmentioned until something goes wrong.
You have paid for a set of drawings. They show your house as it is now, your proposed extension, the floor plans, the elevations, the site plan, all of it. You might assume that because you paid for them, they belong to you and you can do whatever you like with them. Give them to another designer to modify, send them to a different builder, use them on a second project, hand them to a friend who wants something similar done to their place.
So you've got an idea of what you want to build, you've maybe had a builder round to have a look and give you a rough figure, and now somebody has said the word planning and you're wondering whether this is going to be a three month wait or whether it's something you can just get on with next month?
You've established that your project needs planning permission, and now you'd like to know what you're actually in for. How long it takes, what goes into an application, what happens if the neighbours object, and where you stand if the council says no.
Most people meet the Party Wall Act at exactly the wrong moment. The drawings are approved, the builder is booked for the fifteenth, the skip's ordered, and then somebody mentions in passing that you should probably have served notice on next door about two months ago.
You've been told you need planning permission. Or you've been told you don't. And now somebody has mentioned Building Regulations and you're not sure whether that's the same thing said a different way, or whether it's another hoop entirely that nobody had bothered to warn you about.
Have you got a garage that's full of bikes, a chest freezer and about nine years of things you meant to take to the tip, and you've started wondering whether it could be a room instead?
Plenty of older houses round here have a cellar that's damp, dark, half full of coal dust and used for absolutely nothing except housing the electricity meter. And every so often somebody stands down there with a torch and thinks, hang on, why is this not a room?
Tell us what you are planning. We will tell you what is possible, and what the council will say.
