Seeking Pkanning Permission- where to start/Costs etc

RKQ

Slowly Clients are begining to appreciate good design and the latter photo is becoming more common. Unfortunately many still aspire to the first photo.

I've never really understood why "people" want mock Georgian or mock Victorian homes yet aspire to the latest flat screen tv and latest car design? Good modern design is feared in favour of "old world".

Unfortunately people seem to believe that modern design costs more to build or maybe they just don't want to stand out - fearing that their modern design will quickly go out of fashion and age.

These are interesting times.

seclachi

Just to throw in my own experience. I have a site close to a city on agriculturally zoned land (family farm). The first architect we got said it was unlikely we would get it due to its location being pretty prominent.

So he sent in the outline application and it got rejected. There really wasnt that much interaction with him, it was the height of the boom so I guess he was working with many customers. I was disheartened and left it slide for a year or so. Then we got another architect, this one was younger and alot more keen and interested. They did research and checked into why the first application was rejected. What we found was pretty depressing, the original architect application was very lazy, and the council shot it down with ease.

It did make it easier the second time around though because we knew what they did and didnt want. They also made some mistakes, thinking the site was in another location when doing impact surveys.

The architect was brilliant and countered every argument, she knew the planners from her other works, so she knew what beat to tap to. We had to jump through some hoops but I eventually got the permission.

My advice is to look for somebody who is keen and shows a knowledge of your council, its probably rarer now things are quieter, but I imagine there a still a few fire and forget cowboys who just have no interest out there.

onq

seclachi wrote: »

Just to throw in my own experience. I have a site close to a city on agriculturally zoned land (family farm). The first architect we got said it was unlikely we would get it due to its location being pretty prominent.

So he sent in the outline application and it got rejected. There really wasnt that much interaction with him, it was the height of the boom so I guess he was working with many customers. I was disheartened and left it slide for a year or so. Then we got another architect, this one was younger and alot more keen and interested. They did research and checked into why the first application was rejected. What we found was pretty depressing, the original architect application was very lazy, and the council shot it down with ease.

It did make it easier the second time around though because we knew what they did and didnt want. They also made some mistakes, thinking the site was in another location when doing impact surveys.

The architect was brilliant and countered every argument, she knew the planners from her other works, so she knew what beat to tap to. We had to jump through some hoops but I eventually got the permission.

My advice is to look for somebody who is keen and shows a knowledge of your council, its probably rarer now things are quieter, but I imagine there a still a few fire and forget cowboys who just have no interest out there.

Your experience is not unique but I think its also horses for courses.

We've inherited several jobs following on a client having had an experience like you had with your first architect.
There was no suggestion of incompetence, the work was done fine inasfar as it went, just not finding the correct angle to approach a particular problem.
Contrary to your experience usually we're inheriting them from local architects where their narrower focus on tried and tested solutions has not worked.
A lot of them look "insoluble" in local terms and experience gained on a national level can sometimes offer insights.
Sometimes a call to a friendly legal eagle helps on points of law.
Sometimes a close reading of the devlopment plan and online guidance helps avoid making an invalod application.
Sometimes just making an effort to get to know the planners mind helps bring home a permission.
As your post implies, a lot of it is about communication.

FWIW

ONQ.

onq

RKQ wrote: »

Slowly Clients are begining to appreciate good design and the latter photo is becoming more common. Unfortunately many still aspire to the first photo.

I've never really understood why "people" want mock Georgian or mock Victorian homes yet aspire to the latest flat screen tv and latest car design? Good modern design is feared in favour of "old world".

Unfortunately people seem to believe that modern design costs more to build or maybe they just don't want to stand out - fearing that their modern design will quickly go out of fashion and age.

These are interesting times.

<nods>

You don't see many TV sets done in the "antique" style, do you? No.
The reason you don't see more "traditional" TV's is because the marketing people haven't spotted the market.
However - and you read it here first - I bet there is a huge market for TV sets that don't look like they're made out of ceramic or plastic.
I know one client who has just completed his study fit out and its wall to wall timber with the "technical bits" set in timber surrounds and in pop-up enclosures in his desk.

As for traditional designed houses, as an architect or designer its too easy to be judgemental in relation to clients.
Design has done through many phases of development in the last 150 years, but people remain largely the same.
Most of the standing architecture in our towns and cities is still traditional build.
The places where tourists flock contain buildings that are over 200 years old.
In case people aren't taking the hint, in some way Modernism has failed to satisfy the desires of ordinary people.
Suggesting this is because they aren't "educated in design" seems to be a self-fulling argument that is avoiding the root cause.
Traditional building uses an language of forms and materials that allows us to relate to it.
Modernist or one off buildings that don't employ this traditional lexicon seem to be speaking in a foreign language to people who aren't well versed in free-form design.
It may be that in years to come the numbers of moderist building will predominate, but I suspect then the problem will be different.
There will be dialects which nearly talk to each other but don't and you'll end up with style battles similar to the religious wars of the past, with each side claiming some kind of moral superiority over the others, just as the moderns continue to claim over other forms of design today.

Anyway I have been "adminished" for wandering off topic too much so I will stop there.

FWIW

ONQ.

muffler

onq, this persistent and deliberate off topic posting has to stop and stop now. You were asked privately to do so but that request has fallen on deaf ears so now you are being told publicly.

Part of your contributions are always constructive and informative and are, of course, welcome but we would rather not see them when they continually drag almost every single thread off topic.

You can do better.

onq

muffler wrote: »

onq, this persistent and deliberate off topic posting has to stop and stop now. You were asked privately to do so but that request has fallen on deaf ears so now you are being told publicly.

Part of your contributions are always constructive and informative and are, of course, welcome but we would rather not see them when they continually drag almost every single thread off topic.

You can do better.

Hi Muffler,

Thanks for your comments and I note the following; -.

My own self-criticism about being off-topic related to the last three lines of speculative comment about future trands in design in my reply to RKQ.
That means less than 20% of the comments in that post were off topic and even they were directly relating to the issue I discussed in that post.
The rest of my reply to RKQ and the entire of my reply to seclachi were both totally on-topic.
They lay well within the latitude shown in this thread by Mellor and Sydthebeat.
If you have other, specific standards of behaviour for me, please be explicit.

ONQ.