Planning permission forms will be submitted this afternoon

We ended up working with get-planning to submit our application.  Their fee was £200, and on top of that there is the £150 fee for the local authority.

Now we go into an eight week process, which starts with consultation – I think that will take 3-4 weeks.

We have talked this through with one of our neighbours (who is fine) and left a note for the other saying that we need to talk.  I will call on him again tonight.

Feedback and quote from one of the planning advisors

Architect feedback, anticipates some problems with planning permission –full width extensions can be problematic when the adjoining property has side windows

· £80-85k for the whole project might be a bit light

· Up to £2k for party wall

· Up to £2k for structural engineer

· Building control c£900

· Little surprises mean need contingency – electrical, drainage etc.  – 10-15% of contract sum

· The whole project could come to just over £100k

· £1,500 plus £60-100 for downloading ordnance survey work – plus VAT, fees of Islington Council, £150

· Tries to keep in touch with the planner and keep them onside

Planning process

· Allocated to a planning officer

· Goes out to consultation

o Neighbours, on their website

· Wait for statutory period of three weeks after notices gone out

· Then look at proposals in light of the feedback

· Will be swayed by the feedback, particularly if vehemently opposed

Help with planning permission

I just kicked off the process of finding someone new to help with getting us planning.

• I left a voicemail and text for Brian at get-planning.com who I had spoken with before
• I asked Bobby for the phone number of his mate
• I filled out an online form at a lead gen company that will give my name to 14 local providers
• I will call Timbertecs tomorrow.  They could maybe help with the structural engineering and building regs work too

Ian Thackeray’s visit

This evening Ian popped round to give us some advice and talk about how he might be able to help.  Ian is a friend of a friend who specialises in kitchen re-design and refurbishment and will also manage extension projects.

We had a good chat about the extension generally.  These are the key takeaways:

• The options we have to help with planning look like good ones
• The other bits of bureaucracy we need are (not necessarily and exhaustive list):
• Building control
• Ian recommends using a licensed independent inspector – e.g. a company called PWC – cost circa £500 (the alternative is local council inspectors who are more difficult and unpredictable)
• Two constituent parts to building control:
• Structural Engineer’s report
• Ian recommended Dave and Andy from Topham (remember also Andre’s recommendation)
• Worth walking round with the structural engineer to suggest obvious things like can we get that support embedded into the wall
• Building regs submission – shows where pipes etc will go
• we will need to find a firm of technical architects to help with this
• Ian recommended Set Square 01423 561 568
• do it after we have received the structural engineer’s report
• Electrical certificate
• Party wall agreement
• Strongly recommended underfloor heating – but will cost £5-6k
• Went through a lot of the architects costs and figured we will be able to do much better
• e.g. cost of wooden flooring should be max £80-90 laid
• Will be able to have the wooden flooring running front to back of house rather than across ways (as at the moment)

Ian could help us with two things and would like to quote for both independently:

• kitchen design and installation
• construction work

 

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• Property advice: building control (telegraph.co.uk)

Latest thoughts on getting through planning

Our architect has just become our former architect after refusing to come down from the £2.5k fixed fee to take us through planning.  We had a little ‘debate’ where I tried to get him to give us the CAD drawings they produced (after all it doesn’t cost them anything), they refused initially on liability grounds, but after I said that I would sign a waiver, purely on the basis that it is ‘their policy’.  Very annoying.

They will however give us the PDFs and we will have to pay someone else to recreate the CAD drawings.  Likely cost is a few hundred pounds.

I think we now have four options to get us through planning:

• Do it ourselves – my least favourite option.  This might be the cheapest but we are busy people and it will inevitably take much longer than if we get some help
• Two firms who specialise in these situations – one has verbally quoted £1500, the other looks like it might be cheaper, but I haven’t spoken with them yet
• A friend of a friend who works for a council planning department and helps with applications on the side

As an aside we have now chewed through two architects on this project, and I’m wondering what I’m doing wrong, or if they are just a bad breed.  In my experience they don’t seem to really listen to the customer and figure out what they actually want, and they have a messed up charging model where they deliver most of their value up front in the design phase but try to charge most of the money at the back end for project management services.

Structural engineers

Andre – a local builder we might use today recommended a structural engineer.  The company is called Trigram, their number is 020 7401 8100, and the individual there that Andre knows is called Rene.

Ian Thackeray recommended Dave and Andy from Sharp Topham – details to follow by email

Why we need planning permission

I did some calling around and it seems the £2.5k our architect is after to get us through planning is too steep by a factor of about two, given the work he has done already.

So we may well be organising our own planning application.

This page on the very helpful Planning Portal (tells you if you need planning, and we are caught by the following clause:

Maximum depth of a rear extension of more than one storey of three metres beyond the rear wall of the ‘original house’* including ground floor.

Our existing kitchen is an extension on the back of the house that goes more than three metres beyond the original back wall of the house and our idea is to have the rear of our extension finish at the point the kitchen currently finishes.