House Design Masterclass Part 4: Developed design & getting through planning

Once you’ve agreed on a design for your new home, you might expect it to be plain sailing to get all the details finalised and ready to submit with a planning application.

Yet often it takes a while to refine broad ideas into a consistent, credible scheme. Your drawings need to present a house that fits your brief and budget, as well as actually being buildable.

HOUSE DESIGN MASTERCLASS PART 3: INITIAL CONCEPT DESIGN

Be aware that once planning approval is granted, any significant alterations made that affect the massing, materials or general appearance of the house will require you to resubmit, which is a time-consuming and potentially costly exercise – so it’s important to get it right first time round. The design is not exactly frozen, but it does become increasingly difficult to alter after this point.

What’s included?

Planning application drawings have to show the size, shape and context of a design, along with an indication of the materials that will be used externally. If your plot lies within a conservation area or next to a listed building then you might be asked to provide more information about the detailed construction; for example, a large scale drawing of the joinery that makes up the doors and windows.

The council will be expecting your planning application documents to comply with a precise set of rules, designed to ensure they are easy to understand and comprehensive enough to allow a decision to be made and enforced.

Planning Application Checklist Your covering letter. A completed application form. Certificate of ownership (if the site belongs to you) or Certificate of notification to the owner (if it doesn’t belong to you). Certificate saying it’s not agricultural land. An Ordnance Survey location plan at 1:1250 or 1:2500 scale with a red line around the site. Plans and elevations at 1:00 or 1:50 scale. A block plan of the building and site, usually 1:200 scale for a house. A cheque for the planning fee. If in a conservation area, typically also: A design and access statement describing the relationship of the new house to its surroundings and planning policy. Application for conservation area consent if demolition is involved.

This is why the drawings have to be a recognised scale (usually 1:100 or 1:50), with scale bars and north points on the plans. If any essential requirements aren’t met the application will not get past the local authority officer whose job it is to register the proposal onto the system.

It’s usually not enough just to provide a design; there’s an ever-increasing list of reports that might be required, tackling topics such as bats, newts, flood risk, archaeology, trees, contaminated land and noise pollution.

If you have opened a dialogue with the planners when the concept was being developed, you ought to have been told if any of these apply and have consulted the relevant specialists. By this point, then, you should be able to verify that your design will comply with the restrictions imposed.

Understand the drawings

Agreeing the design is an exciting stage for self builders because it’s when the house starts to become real, rather than just an interesting collection of ideas. But you need to work your way around the different aspects of the scheme and test them out with a critical eye.

It can be difficult to look at a scaled floor plan and visualise how it will work in real life. Don’t be surprised if there are aspects of the property that are still in the architect’s head that haven’t leapt out at you from 2D plans and elevations.

The post House Design Masterclass Part 4: Developed design & getting through planning appeared first on Build It.

Article reference House Design Masterclass Part 4: Developed design & getting through planning