ePetition details

Pre-planning web page improvements

We the undersigned petition the council to Add to the pre-planning web page general guidance as to whether or not planning permission would be needed for home improvements.

In light of the need to improve existing homes to reduce carbon footprint, many people will be looking for guidance as to whether planning permission will be needed for works such as
- adding external wall insulation
- adding solar panels
- air source (or other) heat pumps
- double glazing
The answers may need to be different for listed buildings and buildings in conservation areas.
Adding this up-front advice would help to remove barriers to carrying out such home improvements and help home owners avoid the £80.34 fee payable to find out if planning permission is required.

This ePetition ran from 29/10/2021 to 26/11/2021 and has now finished.

14 people signed this ePetition.

Council response

Cllr. Gareth Williams, Deputy Leader & Cabinet Member for Planning & Regeneration has responded as follows:

"Our website provides guidance on Building or Improving your property:
https://www.buckinghamshire.gov.uk/planning-and-building-control/building-or-improving-your-property/apply-for-planning-permission/before-you-make-your-application/
General guidance regarding what does, and does not, require express planning permission is also available on the national Planning Portal website; specifically it’s interactive house: https://www.planningportal.co.uk/.
This is general guidance, as there are so many variables that have to be considered the provision of any definitive detailed advice on solar panels, air source heat pumps, etc is just not possible without the potential for misguiding people.
We have currently suspended the discretionary charged service “Do I need planning permission?.” At the moment the service is concentrating on core work given the very significant increase in applications and delivering wider improvements to the service.

Residents do have the option of using the statutory service, applying for a “Certificate of Lawfulness for proposed development”. The fee for that is half whatever the planning application fee would be for the proposed development. So for householder development it would be £103 (half of the £206 planning fee).

Also as part of our contract with DLUHC we have an active project to publish Plan X on our website. That is basically software that through Q&A allows you to check the Permitted Development (PD) regulations yourself. It can’t however check if PD has been removed as that data is not in a digital form, but we still offer that as a separate paid discretionary service.

The costs of all these services are kept to a minimum but we do have to cover our staff costs and some checks requires reviewing over 200 pages of permitted development legislation, and going back and check the properties entire planning history to see if permitted development rights have been previously removed. This therefore represents very good value for money given the amount of work required and as it reduces any risk of expensive abortive work."