As you will know we are planning some work on our kitchen, this involves an extension to the property and therefore we have got into the merky depths of planning applications.
As it was not at all clear if the work would need planning we took the decision that we would make a planning enquiry. This is a facility offered by the council where you can send them a sketch plan and measurements of what you are planning to do and they will look at it within your situation and give you advice as to if it requires planning and if it does what their thoughts on the likelihood of it being accepted would be when the full planning application went through.
The planning office promise to get an answer to this enquiry within two weeks of of its receipt. Which we considered to be worthwhile. In actual fact the area of the new extension that will be outside the 3 meter from the original house rule would be very small. The extension mostly replaces what is already there rather than creates new. The only part outside the 3 meter rule is a corner area about 1m square. And as such we were hoping that they would come back with the pragmatic approach that it did not need planning.
All that was five weeks ago and we are still awaiting an answer. The person dealing with our enquiry has been on holiday, out on site and too busy with applications. We have been promised a letter several times. The latest being the end of this week so we will see what happens.
This is causing us a great deal of problems. If we do need to go through a full planning application which it is looking it it will do, this process will take between 8 and 12 weeks and as such will take the project into the winter months and the unsettled weather. This will ultimately mean that we will have to delay this project until next year which will then end up costing us considerably more money due to the raise in VAT to 20%.
I also know that our planner, builder and orangery fitters are all crying out for work in the current climate, this form of delay only serves to damage the local economy. If the new coalition government wants to look at ways of triggering the economy sorting these sorts of issues cutting out the delays and forcing the planning departments to stick to the deadlines that they publish would mean that everyone knows where they are and can plan for these projects.
As you can see I am getting very frustrated by this. We are currently in a limbo where we have a great deal of work that we need to do but effectively can not do any of it.
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