As many of you are aware, not only do we prepare and submit our own planning applications, from start to finish, we pride ourselves on doing as much or as little as you need. By this we mean we are very happy to work with architects and other agents to provide planning support within the planning process and we have had a couple of successes in the last week, which are a testament to our ability to provide planning support, and planning statements to architects making planning submissions.
At the end of 2022, we prepared two planning statements to be submitted as part of planning applications being prepared by Andrea Millner (Chartered Architect – www.andrea-millner.com). The first was off the Kidderminster Road in Hagley and proposed a new residential dwelling to the rear of an existing residential dwelling within a residential area. The application site in question stands within the Local Planning Authority of Bromsgrove District Council, where Policy BDP19(N) resists (but does not provide a blanket ban upon) development in gardens unless the proposal fully integrates into the residential area and is in keeping with the character and quality of the local environment. Taking Andrea’s drawings, for the bespoke property in question, we were able to provide a full planning statement which covered the policy position of the proposal, highways, residential amenity, housing mix and density, and high quality design matters. This was then combined with a consideration of the Supplementary Planning Document for Residential Development (Creation of New Dwellings) and was concluded with a planning balance in light of the fact that it was a material consideration that the Council, according to the latest 5-Year Housing Land Supply Monitoring document, could not demonstrate a 5-year housing land supply. In addition to this, the Council had failed their Housing Delivery Test, which overall meant that planning permission should be granted unless any adverse impacts of granting permission would significantly and demonstrably outweigh the benefits, when assessed against the policies in the National Planning Policy Framework 2021 taken as a whole.
Andrea utilised our statement within her submission, and the proposal, for a single-storey dwelling with a basement, was approved in February 2023.
The second proposal was for a replacement dwelling which stood within the Local Planning Authority of Shropshire Council. The application site was a detached dwelling located within open countryside, with extensive planning history which was able to be utilised to support principle of a larger replacement dwelling within the Green Belt and open countryside. The proposal, on the face of it, was not policy compliant due to the restrictions on new buildings in the Green Belt, but the creation of fallback provisions (including a Class AA prior approval for an additional storey) allowed us to successfully argue a larger replacement dwelling across two storeys. We prepared the planning statement which was submitted as part of Andrea’s full application as well as providing response to a neighbour objection during the application period itself.
The proposal was approved on 9 March and will allow the new-build of a substantial replacement dwelling in place of what was, ultimately, a former farm-worker’s bungalow several years ago. This is, in fact, the second case of this nature which we have successfully worked with Andrea upon, the most notable being the substantial, and eye-catching, newbuild dwelling at Manor House Farm at Hackmans Gate (Wyre Forest District Council) which is now fully complete.
Above are just a couple of examples of where we have supported other professionals in their planning submissions, making a very strong team as a result of outstanding architectural drawings and full technical planning support to create life-changing outcomes for some of our clients. If you have a project, as an agent or another planning professional, and would like our assistance please do get in touch via the contact page where you can of course book in for an initial mini-chat to get to know us and see how we can help you with your next project.
Plan credits to Andrea Millner