One bit of news - well, no news really. The man we thought owned the access road (who we wrote to 6 weeks ago to ask permission to use the road) - doesn't! (Own it that is) He has referred us to a Mr Hyde (alias Dr Jek.... no surely not) Another letter has been composed and will be sent tomorrow.
Spent some time this morning pegging out the shape of the house on the plot. It did make us think about a number of issues, particularly the maintenance of the hedgerow, and the proximity we had planned to have the house to the garage. Decided to move the house 2 feet further back on the plot to give more room for parking in front of the house.
This afternoon we went over the plans with a fine toothcomb in preparation for an appointment with our architect on Friday. Given the council's attitude towards revenue generation we have decided to make the upper floor totally open plan and remove the one wall that had created a room to the south west.
We also made a few more adjustments to window sizes, and made the bedroom a little larger. We even managed to agree where the wood burning stove should go!
All set then for the full planning application - probably get some news in 10 weeks from now. In the meantime I'm getting ever so slightly impatient.
Sunday, 28 September 2008
Thursday, 18 September 2008
Bad news today....
Mid Beds Council have declined to accept our new design as a modification of the approved plans so we have to submit a new planning application. This has two effects - firstly a significant delay while drawing up a complete planning application which will take a least two months before being considered. Secondly, it means that we become subject to the contentious "106 Agreement" which councils are using to apply a levy on new house builds (in effect a "new house tax").
This 106 Agreement was originally designed to provide benefit to an area through getting a developer to provided ameneties. However, many councils are now treating the 106 Agreement as a simple tax raising vehicle and have a scale of charges depending on the size of the property (ies). We have been told that a new application of similar size to the approved plan for our plot will now cost us over £12,500 based on a single three bedroomed property. Worse still, this has to be paid before any building can start.
Our design is basically a one bedroomed house so we'll have to see what they make of that!
This 106 Agreement was originally designed to provide benefit to an area through getting a developer to provided ameneties. However, many councils are now treating the 106 Agreement as a simple tax raising vehicle and have a scale of charges depending on the size of the property (ies). We have been told that a new application of similar size to the approved plan for our plot will now cost us over £12,500 based on a single three bedroomed property. Worse still, this has to be paid before any building can start.
Our design is basically a one bedroomed house so we'll have to see what they make of that!
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