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?
Want to knock the kitchen and the dining room into one, or open up a poky little hallway, and somebody has told you that the wall in question might be holding the house up?
You know roughly what you want to do to the house. What you don't know is what happens first, who you're actually supposed to ring, and how long the whole thing takes before anybody turns up and starts building.
When we received our notification that we had been made award winners for Best of Houzz 2017, we were naturally delighted.
When considering your planning application, something to bear in mind is whether you need a coal mining risk assessment.
Tell us what you are planning. We will tell you what is possible, and what the council will say.
