Planning permission sorted!

We had agreed with our architect back in May that he would revise his 2012 submission to a) keep the west section at original length, to match the east section and b) redesign the interior for 5 bedrooms. He would take his time, but submit them to Aberdeenshire council in September 2015, just inside the deadline for a significant tightening of building standards. He would then take his time responding to queries etc. to get the revised planning permission and building warrant by, say May 2016. By that time we thought we would be ready to build.

He did indeed submit in mid-September. We noticed that APP/2015/2897 had appeared on the council website and followed progress – not a lot, none of the reports recommended any additional delay or expenditure.

The application went through with no issues, undoubtedly a tribute to the skills & experience of the architect. We do not have to pay any planning gain – the school is still under capacity and the difference between 4 and 5 bedrooms was regarded as not worth collecting. So it was cheaper than we expected – £401 to Aberdeenshire council and £1,443 to the architect.

At the risk of sounding repetitive…

The accommodation: The final planning permission design was as previously agreed.

The East end of the building has the master bedroom/en-suite and the single garage on the ground floor. Upstairs is a self-contained suite of rooms comprising bathroom, bedroom and a room that is notionally the home office. The latter two cannot have a door between them, due to fire regulations. The only access is from the stairway and the official fire escape is a large roof light overlooking the courtyard.

The West end of the building has two bedrooms, the family bathroom and a public room downstairs – this has a rather large window overlooking what will be garden. The upstairs layout is similar to the East end – bathroom & bedroom, but with an adjoining galleried area overlooking the public room.

The North section connects the other two. It is single-storied with a lounge/dining room and a separate kitchen/family room. Both around 7m long and 4m wide. at the west end we will have our front door, hallway, utility room, plant room and the stair to the West end of the property. At the other end a pantry and the stair to the East end.

Thermal properties: We have balanced cost & utility against thermal efficiency. We have no desire to go the PassivHaus route, but do want a well-insulated, comparatively low-energy house. We also want as much natural light as possible. So we are somewhere inside current building standards, but have as much glass as we can. By a quirk of the SAP calculations, we will get a band C certificate, i had hoped for band B. This is really down to woodburners no longer being counted as carbon neutral and to our high surface area to volume; to go to B, we would have had to compromise on natural light and really up the insulation. We are undecided on double- or triple-glazing

Heating & energy: We will have a 12kW (output) ground-sourced heat pump, to be located on the west-most wall overlooking next-door’s driveway. For winter top-up we will have an 18kW woodburner, this needs to feed under floor heating and hot water.

For spring/summer/autumn water heating we will have a 4kWp PV array on our south-facing roof, backed up by an immersion heater. Any spare electricity from the array will, of course, be used elsewhere in the property and, as a last resort put back into the grid. We will do sums nearer the time to see whether we want to go a) the MCS-certified route and claim the feed-in tariff or b) buy the panels, inverters and other electronics for half the price and DIY.

Having three such different sources of energy means we would want a thermal store, These hold large amounts of water which is typically hotter at the top for domestic hot water and cooler at the bottom for underfloor heating. The GSHP would heat the bottom of the tank, the woodburner the middle and top. The immersion heater would be at the top. The hot water supply is fed cold from the rising main and passes through a heat-exchanger. The big advantage here is having hot and cold water at the same mains pressure. The system will be completely un-pressurised, we will need a feed and overflow tank for the woodburner.

Services: We have mains water and electricity (100A supply). We have a copper phone line which is ‘exchange-only’ and supports low-capacity broadband. We have variable 3G/4G mobile signal.

We will have a standard surface-water drainage system going to a soakaway down the bottom of our plot. The foul water drain will go to a septic tank and, because of the high water table and low permeability of the plot, effluent will be pumped up to a raised drainage mound some 7m x 10m. We were not particularly happy with this but we have no water course on our property to run effluent from a mini STP to.

The exterior: The outside granite walls will be ‘picked and pointed’, the roof will be slated. Windows/doors could be stained wood, although we are leaning towards wooden frames with powder-coated aluminium facings, which are just about maintenance-free.

Any outside-facing walls we demolish we will restore to match the originals – they look to have been built in layers of two courses of large stones, with a leveled surface between layers.

Planning conditions

The one thing we did need to do was fulfill the condition of providing a set of photos of the original structure to the council. The architect had some of his own, we picked 22 more, zipped them up and emailed them to him.

Planning for 2015

We are rather more than a year into our project and have a clearer idea of what we want to get done in 2015:

• Get the temporary electricity supply sorted, this is mostly getting Luke the electrician to do his stuff.
• Finish the fencing. Two things, firstly putting posts in the fence between ourselves and next doors, secondly closing off the open gap on the north side and installing the gates. We need George to have cleared the concrete from the area and to dig holes for three strainers and two gateposts.
• Clear concrete, this a job for George. He thought he could get two days in January to break the long silage pit wall and the concrete ramp to the south of the steading. He would pile up the concrete for us. We need to remove the concrete lintel embedded in the east leg of the steading so that the wall across the courtyard can come down. There is then the hardstanding and shed bases. We would keep some of it to stand materials on.
• Get the water supply installed. We will contact Cadgers Plant Hire, Clola, to run the pipe under the road, they did the same for the Aitkens. We can do the steading end ourselves. We are waiting for Scottish Water to produce a quote for their bit.
• Buy equipment and tools including scaffolding, roof ladder, large angle grinder, concrete breaker.
• Get a demolition warrant. Steve Brown says he is on the case, should submit mid-January and we should have it some six weeks later. This allows us to start removing the roof of the steading.
• Remove enough roof to allow Ric to start on the stonework, assuming he is available. We want to see if the slates are good enough to re-use, possibly on the bothy. The roof timbers will add to our firewood pile.
• Demolish the faulty gable end.
• Foundations for rebuilding the gable end.
• Re-build the gable end.
• Re-apply for planning permission, mostly Steve Brown.
• Get the building warrant, mostly Steve Brown.

Warrants & Certification

Planning & Warrants

We have the quote from our architect for 1) a demolition warrant, 2) revised planning permission and 3) a building warrant. Not having any real idea of how much it might cost, the guesses in my plan are not right in detail, but surprisingly right in total. No sneaky savings, but also no headache.

1. I over-estimated the cost of getting the demolition warrant, which is split roughly evenly between Aberdeenshire council and the architect. This is to allow us to remove the roof and demolish the fire-damaged gable wall, off the back of the current (2012) planning permission.
2. I over-estimated the cost of re-applying for planning permission, this mostly goes to the architect for producing drawings and dusting off the supporting documents from last time. Provided we complete the demolition work by the time the current planning permission expires, we would probably not need another bat survey, hacking £900-£1000 off the bill. Being a bit of a pessimist, I have left this in the projected costs. There is also likely to be more ‘planning gain’ for Aberdeenshire council. This might be around £250 per additional bedroom (over the 4 bedrooms in the 2012 permission).
3. I fairly badly under-estimated the cost of a building warrant. This is partly because the Aberdeenshire council fee is proportional to the estimated cost of the works – and I had no idea what this might work out at. I underestimated the amount of work for the architect. To round it off, I had not included a cost for a structural engineer – about another £1000.

In total around £10,500.

Why the one quote?

Our architect is very local and does steading conversions as a specialism. He worked with Slains Estate on preparing our and neighbouring properties for sale and gained our current planning permission – there will be an element of recycling. He is very experienced and knows how to build houses as well as design them. In a former life he worked in a council building department. Ric, one of my brothers, sat in on a longish meeting with him and was positive. I guess we trust him, even if he is not the cheapest option.

Certification

Time to think about completing the project! Before we have got our hands dirty, we need to know that when we finish the building, we will get a Certificate of Completion and that we would be able to sell the property if we needed to. So we need to understand Certification.

Architect’s Certificate 

Our architect will inspect our building work against the standards, as we progress, and will provide an Architect’s Certificate on completion of the build. This is Council of Mortgage Lenders (CML) approved. Should we need to sell the property within 6 years of taking occupation, the buyer should have no barrier to getting a mortgage.

The architect also has Professional Indemnity Insurance which would apply for the six years after completion. Unlike a warranty scheme, this means we, or a subsequent owner, would have to take court proceedings against him. Given that we will be doing much of the work, I would expect to a) avoid problems and b) fix them myself.

At present we plan to follow this route.

Alternative to an Architects Certificate

Building Standards Certification. The Scottish Government recommends using ‘approved certifiers’ to demonstrate that your building design & construction meet building standards. A certificate of design can be included with an application for a building warrant. It tells the local authority that the design work covered by the certificate meets building standards. It is not mandatory, but it reduces the cost of the warrant and should be quicker. Certificates cover either ‘Building Structures’ or ‘Energy’, so you may need two certificates. The certificate of construction can be included with your completion certificate submission to tell the local authority that the finished work covered by the certificate meets building standards AND that it meets the building warrant. Again it is not mandatory, but it should reduce the cost of the warrant and should save time. The intention to submit the certificate must be stated in the building warrant application. Certificates cover either ‘Electrical’ or ‘drainage/heating/plumbing’, so again you might need both. I doubt if these schemes would reduce the overall cost, but they might give peace of mind.

NHCB warranty

An NHBC warranty (e.g. their Solo product) covers similar ground to an architects certificate, but is for 10 years and has a claims process rather than legal redress. It is transferable.

Certificate of completion

This is what you need to legally live in a new property. In our case this is a paper form, to go to Aberdeenshire Council. It requires a certificate for the electrical system (we know about this and I will not be doing the wiring myself), but with no suggestion that this has to be from an ‘approved certifier’. The application also requires that the energy rating for the property is as stated in the warrant, or that a corrected calculation is attached. This will be from the building warrant. The other certifications are optional, we will submit the Architects Certificate. The local authority has 14 days to approve or reject the application.

The Scottish Planning & Building Standards System

Building planning and control in Scotland is devolved to the Scottish Government, they inherited the former UK system and are adapting it to meet their particular needs. It is not safe to assume that because the ‘English’ building regulations say something is OK, that it will be so in Scotland.

Planning permission

So far as our steading conversion is concerned, it was granted planning permission for three years from the date it was approved, September 2012. As it happens, it explicitly excludes permitted development rights, so anything we want to change (other than the interior) requires us to reapply for planning permission. There is no real concept of outline permission, we go straight to the full process. There is a Scottish equivalent to the English planning portal and applications are on paper to the local authority. Unsurprisingly, our project is classed as a Local Development application.

On payment of the fee, expected to be £382, the application, plans, survey reports and supporting documents are assessed by the Planning Officers, who put the plans out to consultation. They also appear on the Aberdeenshire planning portal, they look to be using the same system as our local authority down south, Waveney District.

Usually the planners will recommend approval or rejection. The application may go to the local planning committee which includes councillors. In our limited experience, the committee do pass applications that have been recommended for rejection by the planners. The aim is to have a decision within 2 months of applying.

Most applications that are approved will levy ‘planning gain’. This is an amount of money to be paid to the local authority to, typically, assist with provision of social housing within the authority and for provision of school places. Our local school has space in it, so this element was waived in 2012. The housing component was around £1000 for the planned 4 bedrooms. We will probably have to contribute further to cover our desired 5 bedrooms. Our re-application will be able to re-use most of the 2012 documents, we will have to have another bat survey done at an estimate of £1000.

You can appeal if your application is turned down, has conditions attached or has not been decided within a set period. The appeal is to either the local authority or to Scottish Ministers, depending on why it was rejected.

Building Standards

In England, one refers to the Building Regulations, with their familiar ‘parts’ e.g. Part L for energy and efficiency. Scotland has their Building Standards, which serve the same purpose but are laid out differently. They also apply different standards.

The principle is the same, your building work must comply and there are penalties if it does not.

Warrants

We will need a warrant from local authority Building Standards before we can start building work, with a fee based on the estimated building costs. This is the only way to show compliance with the Scottish Building Standards. There is no equivalent to Building Notices or to using a ‘competent person’. In Scotland the only Building Control Body is the local authority. The plus side is that warrants are sufficiently detailed that we should be able to do most of the work ourselves without tripping over.

There are Demolition Warrants and Building Warrants and the latter last for three years, extendable to five years. Because of our extended timescale, we will probably get a demolition warrant on our current planning permission so that we can go ahead with removing the roof and demolishing the wall that needs rebuilding. We will apply for new planning permission and get our building warrant before the end of 2015 (when Scottish building standards are tightened up further). That will last until some 20 months after I retire, which should be enough time to finish the work.

Warrants can be changed (in advance of doing the work) on payment of a fee.

Building Inspectors

In Scotland, building inspectors are more at arms length than in England, we are expected to make sure we comply with the standards! You must let the inspectors know when you start and finish work and when you work on the drainage system, You invite them to inspect your works at agreed stages, they may or may not choose to do so. I expect in our case they will choose to inspect, but will probably still be less available to offer useful advice. Which is why the detailed building warrant is potentially valuable.

Certificate of completion

A certificate of Completion is required. It must be obtained, from the local authority building standards department, before the warrant expires. If you wish to live in the property before you have the certificate you can apply for a Temporary Occupation/Use certificate.