Category: Uncategorized

Barnet Borough Council recently withdrew Planning consent for the erection of x6 self-contained flats in replacement of two semi-detached houses.

The project had narrowly been granted permission on the condition that the flats were built exactly as they were shown in all of the drawings submitted for Planning Permission – an obvious, but important detail.

It then came to light that a mistake had been made on one of the drawings: although the height of the proposed was correct, the neighbouring flats were shown as as taller; when in reality, the ridge of the proposed flats would sit higher than next door.

This mistake was admitted by the developer themselves – but it shot them in the foot.

Since the proposed flatscould not be built exactly as they were shown in the drawings submitted for Planning Permission, as prescribed by the condition, the council revoked their decision and refused appeal.

This does might seem a harsh reaction to an honest mistake.

• The developer was transparent in declaring their mistake
• And legally speaking, it had always been the case that the proposed flatscould not be built exactly as they were shown in all of the drawings, as the drawings contradicted each other; thus, it was always impossible to comply with this condition all along.

The developer challenged the decision at High Court and argued that the planning conditions did not dictate the relationship of the proposed to the existing; but the High Court judged that without a note to suggest otherwise, the drawing was misleading enough for planning consent to be revoked.

One might read this as a warning that we, as architects, need to make sure that what we show on our drawings is accurate and consistent, but it might also be taken to mean that presenting applications with minimal detail might be more of a reliable way of securing Planning Permission.

Contentious decisions walk a thin line through the UK Planning system, and an approval that boils down to technicality merely encourages applicants to provide information that is as vague and minimal as possible. This both makes the Planners’ life more difficult, and encourages poor quality design and design presentation, which surely can’t be a good thing?

It’s a difficult one – it can’t be denied that the judgement was actually correct, in that you can’t take away the ability of the Planning Authority to withdraw an approval if they find that the submitted information was incorrect in a material way; but the unintended consequence of such judgements is to encourage less clear and comprehensive Planning documentation, which will make the Planners’ lives more difficult and inevitably lead to an increase in the number of ‘bad’ planning decisions.

The conversation about women’s rights to the city cannot lose traction. The government’s knee-jerk plans to ‘protect’ women by deploying plainclothes police officers in nightclubs is tone-deaf, and the sweeping exoneration of officers’ manhandling women at Sarah Everard’s vigil demonstrates just how ready we are to move on.

Last month The Guardian published an opinion piece called ‘The Guardian view on urban insecurity: build a feminist city’. The article describes ways in which Urban Planners fail to address the issue of women’s safety in urban design and calls for more female representation and better educational practices in Urban Planning.

Design decisions in town and city planning overlook the welfare and safety of women. The fact this statement is true for many other under-represented groups doesn’t make it less of a truthful statement. However, the battle for representation and better educational practices in Urban Planning will be in vain so long as inclusive design is considered an optional extra. It is universally accepted that additional expense in construction cannot be justified, but the value systems of individual planners are of little consequence when someone else has hold of the purse strings.

The built environment is a business. When bloated profit margins take precedence, social concerns such as gender inequality, climate resilience, and the wealth gap are reduced to competing for attention and consideration in design. There is no better example of how comfortable we are with this idea than Section 106. In principle, this is a financial contribution made by a developer to help alleviate the pressure on existing infrastructure brought on by a new development, but in practice, it is often a convenient loophole for city developers to pay their way out of their obligation to provide affordable housing- therefore maximising their return on each plot. This side-lines the needs of the community and legally undermines affordable housing targets set by councils! But as a commercial organisation, the developer is only ever going to jump as high as the bar is set.

There are standards in place. Secured By Design is a Police security initiative that presents scenarios where design is a risk factor in a crime taking place; however the guidance is not compulsory, and even then, it has not been designed to address issues surrounding access to the city. It is important to recognise that there are social, economic, and symbolic barriers to the city and its opportunities, as well as the physical threat to safety. For example, one assumption that underpins urban design is that the provision of care takes place at home. The separation of financial and business districts from schools and residential areas means statistically, women have more complex travel routes associated with their gendered responsibilities. Navigating the public transport system built for the 9 – 5 commuter is more physically demanding, more costly, and places women in increasingly vulnerable situations. The systemic neglect of the female right to the city is yet to be acknowledged in statutory advice.

‘The way our cities and towns look and work reflect yesterday’s political priorities. Until the opportunity arises for new development, we’ve got to work with what we have. But at the point of re-development, everyone responsible for the built environment needs to prioritise female use. This is actually less to do with gender, and more to do with designing for the practical reality of the population. If a housing estate is a 40-minute train ride from work, and a 20-minute walk to school in the opposite direction, we should be forecasting how incremental changes can make life easier for the pedestrian. This includes making pavements wide enough for prams to cross and providing a safe and comfortable place to stop and rest on the way. If women physiologically require x3 as long in the toilet- we need to provide them with x3 as many cubicles! Provision of social infrastructure should come at the same rate as housing- and the only way to guarantee that it does is through legislation.

Gender mainstreaming needs to become procedural. Policy needs to become more receptive to research. The built environment needs to be forced to take responsibility for its impact on human life and the bar needs to be set higher. Boris Johnson has promised to do ‘everything we can’ to protect women in response to the murder of Sarah Everard, and the influx of female testimony. Behind this statement should be unwavering support for the promotion of inclusive design standards, and it can no longer be an option.

You’ve probably heard about the Tiny House movement, but how about Tiny Forests?

These hit the UK national news recently, with a piece on the BBC’s news website, but to be honest it’s a new one on me!

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/av/stories-56003562 | https://earthwatch.org.uk/get-involved/tiny-forests

We’ve mentioned before on our Facebook page the perhaps surprising fact that some urban areas of the UK beat some of our rural landscapes for tree cover – particularly in areas of intensive agriculture – and Tiny forests would also seem to add the opportunity to massively enhance biodiversity in urban and suburban environments.

The concept also raises important questions about landscape architecture, urban design, and even the way we use our private gardens. The traditional approach prioritises occupier amenity over ecology and environment, with neatly trimmed lawns and heavily-managed planting of non-native species, and woe betide any neighbour who doesn’t cut their grass every Sunday morning in summer.

One of the pillar’s of Boris’ recent Planning White Paper was a proposal for ‘tree lined streets’. Whilst this sounds laudable and lovely in principle, it is fraught with practical issues (highways visibility and safety, impact on below-ground services, management costs and commuted sums for ‘adoption’ of the trees by already financially over-stretched Highways Authorities). Perhaps a better solution in some cases would be the incorporation of unmanaged buffer zones/wildlife corridors along the back of residential gardens on new developments, with the increased privacy and ecological benefit that these would offer being allowed to offset a reduction in the size of managed rear gardens for the direct amenity of human residents?

It would take a major shift in thinking for the Hyacinth Bouquets amongst us, but maybe we need to stand back and think about the limited amenity use many of us put our gardens to, versus the potential ecological benefits of allowing partial ‘re-wilding’ of the domestic landscape?

Receipt of a renewal certificate for our RIBA Chartered Practice status
prompts us to remind prospective clients that we are Chartered Architects
and, via our Planning Director, Kelly Grunnill, Chartered Planning
Consultants, carrying full professional indemnity insurance.

These standards give you assurance of our professional capabilities and
conduct, and we are proud to be unusual as a small, domestic practice, in
offering BOTH.

The title ‘Architect’ is protected by law, and can only be used by
individuals or practices with suitable accreditation (ARB registration or
RIBA membership). Unfortunately, the title ‘Planning Consultant’ carries no
such protection and it’s not unusual to find unqualified plans-drawers
styling themselves as such, on the basis that they think themselves expert
having submitted a few Planning applications. Sadly, Planning law and
practise is a lot more complicated than that, these days, so always look for
the MRTPI (Member of the Royal Town Planning Institute) as an assurance of
Chartered status when you’re looking for Planning expertise.

Beware that many small practices and individuals offering domestic design
services have no formal accreditation at all, and some don’t even carry
professional indemnity insurance. That might seem fine when you get their
cheap invoice, but you’re on your own if something goes wrong.

We mentioned in last week’s blog piece on the Future Homes standard that we’d come back with further detail and commentary in due course and the changes that are afoot are substantial, but one implication will be that life gets a lot more difficult if you’re looking for large glazed areas.

Apart from the basic difficulty of compensating for the relatively massive heat loss that these present, the Regulations are also beginning to recognize and take better account of overheating risks form large glazed areas.

 A new Approved Document X sets limits on glazed area, beyond which special design measures will need to be applied to prevent overheating. Interestingly, these are much stiffer in Greater London than in the rest of England, with the London limit on glazed area being set at 13% of floor area, versus 21% elsewhere in London.

Now, we can tell you from experience that it’s not difficult at all to exceed 13% glazed area, and exceedingly easy where clients request fashionably large bifold doors, so it looks like we’ll need to start thinking much more carefully about whether we can ‘afford’ these (in design terms) in the future.

The good news for bifolds is that, at the moment, it looks like those special design measures may need to be nothing more than the ability to open up enough of the glazed area to be able to disperse the heat build-up, but it remains to be seen how much of a problem the additional heat loss will present. It will be interesting to see whether this will mark the start of a shift away from large areas of glazing on domestic dwellings. The draft Approved Document X does not yet include any proposed Limits on Application, so we can’t be sure yet whether this will apply only to new builds, or whether extensions and alterations will also fall within its scope.

Introduction of proposed changes to Building Regulations
(Parts L and F – Energy Efficiency and Ventilation)

We’re slightly late posting this news, simply because we’ve been too busy to write blog posts, but the English Government has finally published a definite time line for introduction of revised Building Regulations moving toward the Future Homes Standard, which aims to make new homes ‘zero carbon ready’ by 2025.

The first step is an ‘interim uplift’ to Part L of the Building Regulations, requiring a 31% reduction in carbon emissions, compared to current Regulations. The timeframe for introduction of these changes has now been confirmed:

• Consultation drafts of the revised approved documents have been published and final versions will be published in December of this year.
• The new Approved Documents will come into force in June 2022.
• Transitional arrangements will be tougher than usual, applying to individual homes (not whole developments) and being limited to 1 year.

This means that any new building registered under current Regulations will need to commence construction before June 2022 and will need to be completed by June 2023, otherwise it will need to be upgraded to meet the new standards.

The definition of ‘building’ means that this will apply to a detached house, semis or a row of terrace houses, or blocks of flats.

As many will already be aware, the upgrade in the Regulations will be accompanied by a shift in the way carbon emissions are calculated, such that it will favour the use of electricity for heating much more strongly than the previous methodology – the justification for this being that much more of our electricity is now being generated by sustainable sources than it was when the old version of the SAP calculation methodology was written. This will mark the beginning of the end for fossil fuel boilers, and the ascendancy of heat pumps as the ‘normal’ method of heating our nation’s homes.

It was originally anticipated that the Fabric Energy Efficiency element of the requirements was set to be deleted – meaning, in essence, that it wouldn’t have much mattered how much energy your building used, provided that energy was generated by low or zero-carbon sources. It now looks like this is NOT going to be the case, however. The Fabric Energy Efficiency requirement is likely not only to be saved, but looks set to be made 15% tougher than at present – though final confirmation of this will need to wait for the publication of the new Approved Documents in December.

Look out for further detail and commentary on the forthcoming changes in our blog over this summer.

Consultation drafts of the Approved Documents can be found here:

https://www.gov.uk/government/publications/building-regulations-approved-documents-l-f-and-overheating-consultation-version

And the overall Government response to the Future Homes Standard consultation  is available to read here:

https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/956094/Government_response_to_Future_Homes_Standard_consultation.pdf

More grumbles are reaching our ears about the length of time Local Planning Authorities are taking to validate Planning applications at present.

Now while we all have some sympathy with the internal communication difficulties, and therefore delays, being imposed by Covid, I suspect that poor management is turning this into a vicious circle that will be costing the building economy a huge amount of time and money, overall.

Planning applications have ‘statutory’ determination periods that in theory mean that LPA’s are obliged to determine applications within fixed periods – 13 weeks for major applications, 8 weeks for most other stuff. The problem is that the clock starts ticking on these determination periods from the day after a VALID application is RECEIVED… so if an LPA takes 4 weeks to validate it, it halves the time their Officers have to actually determine the application and effectively makes it impossible, with minor applications like householder extensions, because of the periods required to advertise and consult upon the application.

As a result, there is clear evidence (though obviously denied by individual LPA’s) that the administrative staff dealing with the validation process are doing their utmost to find problems with applications, in order that they can claim they are ‘invalid’, thus buying their Officers more time on processing periods.

The evidence is that well over 50% of all applications are rejected as invalid upon first submission – many for entirely trivial reasons – and the cumulative time and effort battling a way through this process must be costing the industry an enormous amount in total. There used to be published national guidance encouraging LPA’s to adopt a more flexible approach to the validation process (link: https://assets.publishing.service.gov.uk/government/uploads/system/uploads/attachment_data/file/7727/1505220.pdf ), but astonishingly, this has now been withdrawn and replaced by guidance stipulating a much more rigid and buereacratic approach (link: https://www.gov.uk/guidance/making-an-application#validation-of-an-application )

If the Government wants to speed up the Planning process, they’d be well-advised to address some of the basic bureaucratic bottlenecks, before adding further complexity and confusion with their endless stream of amendments to Permitted Development rights.

In the meanwhile: the trick to achieving first time validation is careful scrutiny of your LPA’s Local Validation Requirements. Even we don’t get it right every time (we don’t think there’s an Architect or Planning Consultant out there who does!) , but we manage first-time validation of our applications a lot more often than not, so contact us if you need advice on the application package required for your particular proposal.

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(also file under: don’t believe everything you read on the internet and the problem with loopholes is that you can hang yourself with them).

Garden room ‘home offices’ are flavour of the month at the moment, with still no end seemingly in sight for Covid lockdown measures.

Almost every manufacturer of off-the-shelf garden rooms will tell you that their designs are compliant with Permitted Development rules, and that you don’t need permission for them.

There are ALL SORTS of potential trip hazards, here, not least that there are confusing differences between the exemptions for Planning and those for Building Regulations, but we’ve just had an example drawn to our attention of another one that often gets missed.

The question was how you measure the heights of such buildings and in THIS CASE (hyperlink to: https://logcabins.co.uk/how-to-measure-the-height-of-a-log-cabin/) the manufacturer is quite right in that the rules say that on sloping ground you’re allowed to measure from the highest pre-existing ground level immediately adjacent to the building.

What they’ve failed to spot is that there is a separate, quite clear rule saying that no outbuilding – no matter what overall height – is acceptable as ‘Permitted Development’ where it would ‘include the construction or provision of a verandah, balcony or raised platform”.

Don’t take anything you’re told by manufacturers and suppliers of these buildings as Gospel truth and before spending £thousands on such a builing, we’d urge you to talk to us about checking your precise circumstances and requirements, and obtaining a ‘Certificate of Lawfulness’  if necessary, to avoid problems further down the line.

News this week that Dudley Council had tried to take enforcement action against 70-year-old Mr Eddie Solly, for a mural painted on his garage door.

The interesting thing in Planning terms is that their justification for this was that they claimed the work breached Permitted Development rights because it was ‘an unauthorised advertisement larger than 0.3m²’.

It’s not the first time that this justification has been used in such enforcement action: Bridgend Council in Wales took action earlier this year against a mural commemorating the flooding of Tryweryn village to create a reservoir.

Meanwhile, of course, Belfast tolerates murals that promote extremist political ideologies (on both sides) that are downright offensive to many people, and several authorities have spent public money protecting work by the graffiti artist ‘Banksy’.  

It all raises the question of where art stops, and advertising begins, particularly since much art has a political or social point to make… and is the Planning system an appropriate means of censorship?

On a more prosaic note, are the advertising agencies missing a trick by not using ‘teaser’ campaigns of subtly branded unauthorised street art for commercial ends?

The Town and Country Planning Act defines an ‘advertisement’ as:

“any word, letter, model, sign, placard, board, notice, awning, blind, device or representation, whether illuminated or not, in the nature of, and employed wholly or partly for the purposes of, advertisement, announcement or direction…”

Related regulations clarify that the definition does not include ‘anything employed wholly as a memorial’ (which surely should have exempted the Tryweryn village mural?) and the English version of the Regulations permits ‘a placard or other object borne by an individual or animal’, which could bring a whole new meaning to the ‘branding’ of cattle…

https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/uk-england-birmingham-55275563

#advertisment planning rules #planning censorship #banksy #murals

Loft Condensation

It’s that time of year again, folks!

Cool, damp autumn air – possibly combined with the fact that many people will soon be making their annual trip up to the loft to dig out Christmas decorations – means that November and December are when most of us will spot loft condensation.

This is a growing problem with increased insulation levels, so be particularly careful if you live in a modern, new-build house, or if you’ve recently added extra insulation to your loft.

Here’s what you need to know….

What’s the problem?

If you have a ‘cold’ roof – what we call a traditional loft space with insulation at ceiling level and an unheated, uninsulated space above it – condensation can form that soaks into the insulation. In serious cases, it can be bad enough to stain ceilings, cause roof timbers to rot and mould to grow on anything stored in the loft.

Why does it happen?

 Warm air can hold more moisture than cold air – that’s why we get a dewfall at night as the air cools off after the sun has gone down.  The same thing can happen in your loft, usually causing moisture to collect on the underside of the roofing felt/roof membrane and to drip off onto the insulation below, or to condense within the insulation itself. If you have absorbent loft insulation – like the common glassfibre quilt – this moisture soaks in and over a period of days or weeks gradually saturates the insulation.

Where does the moisture come from?

Two places, mainly:

• Traditionally, the problem is warm, moist air from inside the house leaking into the loft space. As it cooled on its way out – or if it came into contact with cold pipework or water tanks – the water vapour we’ve added to the air in our homes from cooking, bathing, laundry and even breathing can condense out as liquid moisture.

• In recent years, we’ve unwittingly added another problem: the extra insulation in our lofts means that there’s not as much heat leaking from the house below as there used to be. The air cools off at night so that it’s barely any warmer than the air outside, and a dew falls inside our loft, just like it does on the lawn!

There can also be more subtle and complicated effects, where the breeze flowing over the roof causes an invisible low-pressure ‘bubble’ to form over the lee slope of the roof, a bit like a very crude aeroplane wing. This low pressure causes cooling, which can increase condensation. On an aeroplane, it’s one of the reasons we see ‘con-trails’ (condensation trails) forming behind high-flying jet airliners. In your loft, you’ll see drips of water forming on the underside of the roof slope.

How do I check it?

This time of year – October through to December – is the worst period for loft condensation, so now is the time to keep an eye on things.

Ideally, go up into your loft first thing on a cool morning, before the sun has had chance to warm things up, and look for visible condensation (beads of moisture)  on the underside of the roof slope, or on any exposed pipework or water tanks.

Prod your hand about in the loft insulation, to check if it feels damp.

How can I fix it?

This can be a bit trickier: first you’ve got to figure out what the source is (and bear in mind that sometimes there can be more than one!).

If it’s the ‘traditional’ source of warm air leaking out of the house, then the obvious solution is to stop those leaks – and the good news (kind of) is that you need to be doing this whatever the cause of your loft condensation, so it’s always a good place to start.

Make sure your loft hatch is well sealed and insulated, and that there are no unsealed penetrations through the ceiling around pipes, wiring or recessed downlights. The latter are a particular problem these days, especially since they’re often used over bathrooms or en suites, where internal moisture levels are particularly high. If you have recessed downlights, make sure they use a sealed box or hood as shown below (but it should be noted that standard ‘fire hoods’ are not likely to be suitable)

Next, make sure that all pipes and water tanks are properly lagged, so that moist air isn’t coming into contact with cold surfaces on plumbing.

Finally, make sure that your loft is properly ventilated.  Most lofts with traditional roofing felt should be ventilated at the eaves, and you need to make sure that the air paths form these vents are not obstructed by insulation. Some modern roofs use vapour permeable roof membranes instead of traditional roofing felt, and theoretically these don’t need eaves ventilation (though the membrane can’t always cope in practice). If you’re not sure what your roof is, speak to an expert.

Storing things in your loft is not really a good idea and can also restrict airflow, but if you must do it, keep it to a minimum, and keep the stored items in the middle with plenty of space for airflow around them.

Even when you’ve done all that, if your loft is heavily insulated you may find that you still have problems. If you reach this point, it’s time to call the experts in, because some solutions that fix one problem will cause or exacerbate another… for example in some circumstances, increasing the ventilation levels will only make that aerodynamic cooling effect we mentioned earlier worse, because you’re just feeding an endless supply of damp air onto a surface that’s been cooled by the low pressure bubble created by the airflow over it!

The ultimate issue is that we’re now pushing the very limits of what will work in terms of insulation levels, on traditional ‘cold’ roof design, and as we push for ever more energy-efficient buildings, the future is likely to see a change to ‘warm’ roof construction (where there is no unheated, uninsulated loft space)… but that requires entirely different detailing and is not cheap or easy to apply to an existing roof.