Encouraging emerging talent – Work placements at Planning & Design

PDP_Work Placements

Planning & Design Practice are proud to have an ongoing tradition of encouraging and supporting emerging talent, having offered a number of work experience, work placements and graduate opportunities over our twenty years in practice.

In September 2021, Matthew Kempster a student at the University of Derby studying Architectural Technology, joined us for a yearlong work placement to gain on the job experience of life as part of our approachable and experienced team of RIBA Chartered Architects and architectural assistants.

Having just finished his second year he joined us as a member of the architectural team, and the opportunity to work on a wide range of new and exciting projects. As his placement comes to end, and he returns to university to complete his studies, Matthew reflects on his time with us and the experience he has gained.

“Now that my time at Planning & Design Practice is coming to an end, I thought this was a great opportunity to look back over the past 12 months and the lessons I have learnt, and the impression this will have on my further academic studies.

In early 2021 I was given the opportunity to work at Planning & Design on a year’s paid placement. Money aside, this was a really exciting opportunity for me, up until this point I had had no real-life experience in an architectural practice and was eager to gain some first-hand knowledge.

I joined as part of the Architectural team. I was greeted by the friendly team who welcomed me into the company with open arms and I started working on a wide range of interesting projects that comes into the practice.

One type of project that Planning & Design are particularly know for, are their Class Q barn conversions. I was fortunate enough to have the opportunity to be involved on two such projects during my time at the practice. These projects are really interesting to work on from a design perspective as the existing structure and framework of the barn has to be considered carefully when designing the proposal. The restrictions of the Class Q application itself can also form constraints during the design process, including, restrictions on extensions of the barn outside of the existing fabric or limits to the amount of demolition to the existing structure. The idea of these limitations is to maintain the character of the existing barn during the process of conversion from agricultural use to a home. Working with these wide range of considerations can result in some eye-catching designs for buildings that would otherwise be left to fall into disrepair in the countryside.

Working at Planning & Design has enabled me to learn a lot on a wide range of different areas due to the practices large range and depth of specialisms, which for me has been a brilliant learning experience. One of possibly the biggest areas of learning for me has been how planning can influence the design and a project as a whole, after all without planning a project cannot be realised. These benefits come from Planning & Design’s business model of having experienced planners and senior architects under the same roof. The company also have a heritage team, which I have had the privilege to work with and learn so much about the fascinating histories of the buildings we have worked on and how they are being redeveloped to enable them to be used for generations to come.

Going forward I am going to be finishing my studies at The University of Derby and after that we shall see what the future has in store for me!”

For more information on our practice, and our work and to hear first about opportunities to join our team including work placements, follow us on social media and sign up to receive our Monthly Newsletter.

Alpaca your bags to Beckside Care Farm this summer!

PDP_Alpaca

Planning & Design Practice is delighted to announce that planning permission has recently been secured to vary Condition 7 (Occupancy Restriction on C2 Use accommodation) of planning permission 20/00115/VCOND to allow users taking part in the activities at Beckside Care Farm to occupy the on site accommodation on a temporary basis. The site functions as an agricultural small holding and alpaca farming business which breed, raise and sell alpacas and their fibre throughout the country. Beckside Care Farm forms part of a farm diversification scheme that provides occupational therapy for adults with learning difficulties. A modern facility has been constructed at the farm and is due to open this summer.

Beckside Care Farm. Alpaca farming business.
Figure 1: Beckside Care Farm facility

The building comprises of two bedrooms (with a carer bedroom located at ground floor) which allows service users attending sessions the opportunity for a short residential break with the appropriate care provided on site.

The variation of the condition will allow the farm diversification scheme to invite a broader customer group, other than just those with specific health and social care needs. The facility would continue to remain ancillary to the authorised use of the site but will crucially allow all users to stay in the accommodation overnight. This will enable users to partake in the social, educational and therapeutic activities on offer at Beckside Care Farm.

To find out more information about what is on offer at Beckside Care Farm head to https://www.becksidecarefarm.co.uk/

It was successfully argued that the proposal will enable Beckside Care Farm to further diversify in line with the services currently on offer and would not replace or prejudice, farming activities on the rest of the farm.

Andrew Stock, Principal Planner at Planning & Design Practice worked closely with the Planning Department at Derbyshire Dales District Council in securing planning permission.

Commenting on the approval Andrew Stock said:

“I’m delighted that planning permission has been approved to allow Beckside Care Farm, which is a fantastic occupational therapy-led rural retreat for adults with learning difficulties, to continue to grow by opening up the accommodation to a wider range of users.

I have always been impressed with the project at Beckside Care Farm, which for me started as being the Planning Officer dealing with the initial application for the facility in 2018. It has been a pleasure to now promote this latest application which strengthens the offering on site.”

Gaining planning permission is a key step in almost any development. Planning & Design Practice Ltd is a multi-disciplinary team of Town Planners, Architects, Architectural Assistants and Design Professionals, and Heritage Specialists. We can take a project through from inception to completion, but we also offer the flexibility to engage a client’s own architects and provide a planning service, whilst our design team can also work with clients who have engaged other town planning professionals.

We have extensive knowledge about the policies and procedures of individual Councils and the approach taken by planning officers and Councillors.

For a free, no obligation consultation to discuss your project, please don’t hesitate to get in touch on 01332 347371 or email enquiries@planningdesign.co.uk.

Holiday Home Blues

PDP_Holiday Home

With summer holidays at the forefront of many people’s minds and holiday homes frequently in the news, Jonathan Jenkin, Consultant and Chartered Town Planner at Planning & Design Practice sets out how planning policy can create a manifesto for change to eradicate the problems caused by this phenomenal rise in popularity.

I heard a report on second homes on the Isle of Wight having myself recently returned from a holiday in Cornwall where there are more holiday and second homes in most coastal villages and towns than permanent homes. In Derbyshire where I live, many of the Peak District villages are dominated by holiday and second homes and this leads to a lack of housing stock, the collapse of local communities, pressure on public services that struggle to meet demand, with wages that cannot keep up with house prices, rapidly rising house prices, low local wages relative to house price, a lack of affordable homes and very few homes for first time buyers.

The demand for and growth in second homes and holiday homes has been phenomenal in the past five years. Firstly, the tax advantages of holiday and second home ownership are significant and many holiday homes are now run as small companies and are exempt from council tax. Cornwall alone is losing £15m a year in lost council tax.

Secondly, the internet and working from home have made holiday home letting much easier and cheaper, the pandemic has driven a demand for a better quality of life and allowed people to work from their second home for periods of the year.

Thirdly, climate change and the pandemic have reduced the demand to fly, travel widely and holidaying abroad.

Fourthly, Brexit has made property ownership in Europe more difficult, with the costs of running a holiday home or a second home in Europe have increased substantially while demand is only slowly recovering.

It should also be recognised that there is also a long-term shortage of homes in Britain, driven by a lack of public housing. This has driven up the price of housing way above increases in earnings and inflation, so the demand for second homes and holiday homes is also seen as a means to increase wealth without having to work for it.

A Manifesto for Change:

We can solve this problem in the following ways:

1: All holiday homes and second homes should be registered with the council. This is due to start in Cornwall next year.

2: National planning policy should create a distinct holiday and second home use class separate from a property which is in permanent residential use as a home (the ‘principal dwellinghouse’). All those properties registered as holiday and second homes should fall within this new class. This is not a radical idea, houses in multiple occupation are already treated differently in the planning system as are homes restricted to those working in agriculture and forestry.

3: Holiday homes and second homes would be subject to a double council tax charge whether they are owned individually or by a company. Currently a council can only increase council tax on vacant property. This will help to fund local services including health.

4: A second/holiday home can become a principal dwellinghouse and be deleted from the register and by doing so will be subject to the normal level of council tax. Planning permission will not be required. However, if the owners of a permanent home, then want to use it as a holiday home or a second home, planning permission will be required.

A local council may have planning policies to prevent the loss of permanent accommodation in key locations.A council may also require all new build housing to be for permanent occupation only. This already happens in key tourist spots such as St Ives.

If a property is being used as a second/holiday home without being registered, then it will be subject to enforcement action. All holiday and second homes will be identified on local plan maps, available to access on the internet. All holiday letting companies will be required to ensure all property owners register their properties with the Council as a condition of letting and this would include Airbnb and other internet based letting companies.

5: To help ease the current shortfall in affordable rented property, winter lets would be allowed on holiday property for a minimum period of 6 months. The property owner would register the holiday let as being in short term permanent occupation with the council, and this would allow the council tax burden to be shared between the tenant and the owner without a change in use class.

6: Park homes and lodges that can be lived in throughout the year would be treated in the same way. These rules would not apply to caravan parks, and short-term camping and caravan sites.

These measures would provide local communities with more control, they would help to share the burden of providing local services and create more balanced and vibrant communities in the long term.

Jonathan Jenkin, Planning Consultant and Chartered Town Planner, Planning & Design Practice Ltd

Planning & Design – Sent to Coventry

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For the first time, in what seemed a long, long time, the Planning & Design team were all together and being “sent to Coventry”, as we resumed our annual Study Day tradition with a trip to the UK City of Culture 2021.

Making the most of the “Freedom Day” relaxation of the Covid-19 restrictions that had necessitated home and flexible working for our team of architects and town planners, and unable to organise a trip in 2020, this was the first time our full team had all been together in over 18 months.

Coventry was the fastest growing city in Britain between the First and Second World Wars. With its medieval streets becoming congested and overcrowded, in 1938 the City Council appointed Donald Gibson to become the first city architect. The newly created City Architect’s Department had ambitious plans, and the devastation of the Coventry Blitz, especially the air raid of 14th -15th November 1940 afforded it the opportunity to design and implement an entirely new city centre. This as we were to discover, offered a wealth of architectural styles for us to explore- Brutalist, modernist and medieval all sitting side by side.

The re-planning of Coventry City Centre had started before the Blitz; it was the extensive war time damage, that both directed and enabled Gibson and the City Architect’s Department to turn the ambitious plans into reality. His legacy was apparent throughout the city with buildings such as Broadgate House, the Upper and Lower precincts and the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, where we began our tour, all bearing testament to his ethos to reimagine a city centre, what it could and should be. Gibson’s then novel town planning concept to separate traffic and pedestrians resulted in Europe’s first car free shopping precinct and the various zones earmarked for retail, religion, administration, and recreation, are still in evidence today.

From the Herbert Art Gallery and Museum, we moved on to explore the modernist Cathedral Church of St Michael. This is one of three cathedrals in Coventry, the first was St Mary’s, a monastic building, of which only a few ruins remain and the second St Michael’s, a 14th-century Gothic church later designated as a cathedral. A ruined shell after its bombing during the Second World War, this now serves as a garden of remembrance and sits alongside the new cathedral of St Michael. Designed by Basil Spence and Arup, built by John Laing and a Grade I listed building, the new cathedral was consecrated on 25 May 1962, with Benjamin Britten’s War Requiem, composed for the occasion, premiered in the new cathedral to mark the occasion.

Gibson’s legacy continues to be felt in Broadgate, which has been at the heart of the city for almost 1,000 years. Civic offices Broadgate House was the first new building to be completed and was opened in May 1953. It was later followed by the Owen Owen department store, now Primark and the Hotel Leofric in 1955, which is now Mercia Lodge, a development of student flats since 2008 and with the old hotel ballroom now home to a climbing wall. The remaining side of the Broadgate square was temporary shops until being replaced by Cathedral Lanes in 1990, a £20 million- plus development that has helped transform the city’s leisure economy. Obviously a great spot to stop for lunchtime refreshments!

Coventry’s most (in)famous resident, Lady Godiva also makes her presence felt in Broadgate with her “Self Sacrifice” sculpture taking pride of place in the square, whilst the Lady Godiva Clock, installed in 1953 recalls, every hour on the hour, the legend of her legendary ride naked through Coventry. Peeping Tom, the tailor who disobeyed her wishes not to peek is seen to look out of an upper window, being struck blind he certainly paid a heavy price for his curiosity!

Sir Donald Gibson CBE left Coventry in 1955, becoming County Architect in Nottinghamshire. He was subsequently knighted and became the government’s senior architect, responsible for raising architectural standards, across the UK.

We left Coventry, having soaked up the atmosphere, and the sunshine (a rarity on a PDP Study Day when we normally plan for rain!) and having been impressed at how the city is continuing to re-invent itself, repurposing its buildings and its sense of identity as it looks to build upon the opportunities afforded by its City of Culture status.

A porch too far?

PDP_Retrospective Planning Permission

We recently secured a retrospective planning permission for a client who had started to build a porch structure around the front door of their Class Q barn conversion. The converted building was formerly a piggery before the landowner approached us to submit a successful Prior Notification Application under Permitted Development Rights legislation. During the design process, great care was taken to ensure the agricultural character of the building was preserved. This was achieved by utilising the existing openings on the structure for windows and doors, and we proposed the converted building be clad in timber to soften its appearance in the landscape.

Permission was duly granted and the works carried out within the 3 year timeframe required by the legislation. However an issue arose when a member of the Local Authority’s Enforcement Team became aware that the landowner had begun to erect a porch structure around the front entrance of the property. For many domestic properties similarly modest extensions would be permissible under the General Permitted Development (England) Order 2015. However, the problem in this particular situation was two-fold. Firstly, extensions to the primary elevation of a dwellinghouse are not permitted by virtue of Schedule 2, Part 1, Class A.1 (e). Secondly, the legislation is clear that any former agricultural building that is converted under the provision of Class Q does not benefit from Permitted Development Rights.

To remedy the situation, we produced a full planning application to gain retrospective permission for the extension. Our argument focused on how the porch was acceptable from a design perspective, in so far as it was subservient to the original dwelling in size and scale, and that the use of the same timber cladding would tie the porch in visual with the rest of the site. We also highlighted the functional need of the space. The landowner is still involved in the agriculture business and needed the porch as a “boot-room” space where they could easily get in and out of muddy boots and clothes. We successfully explained that the extension was compliant with the requirements of the Authority’s countryside and landscape protection policies. We also took the opportunity to apply for an extension to the dwellings domestic curtilage, which is also restricted under Class Q, which now means the landowner can enjoy the area of land which encompasses their building more freely than the legislation permits.

Sometimes people undertake building work or they use land in a different way without applying for planning permission when they should.

The planning system is complex and mistakes happen. We are always willing to provide help and advice, and are able to provide an initial consultation without charge. Please contact us if you have a project or property you would like to discuss.

Understanding Use Classes Order reform

PDP_Use Class Order

The government have recently announced some profound changes to the way in which use of land and buildings is categorised – the 2020 Use Classes Order amendments. The reforms will bring in three new land use classes, which are broad in nature, and will replace several of the more narrow and prescriptive elements of the previous system.

In essence, the reforms have been designed to offer landowners a greater level of flexibility to change between the various uses within the new classes. The most noteworthy change in the pooling of shops, offices, restaurants and cafes, together with business uses. Following the change to the legislation due on the 1st September a landowner owning any of these types of property will be able to change the buildings use to any other falling within that category without the need to apply to the local authority.

This is going to have a particularly interesting impact on the high street, and retail centres in general. The emergence of internet shopping and out-of-town shopping centres have caused a huge downturn in the number of people travelling into town centres, issues which have been compounded by the Covid-19 pandemic. The rationale behind the new changes is to give landowners and business operators’ additional flexibility to respond to demands in the market. There are still some questions about the level of influence Authorities will have to push back on these flexibilities. The picture will undoubted become clearer over the next 6 months, and we will certainly be keeping our clients updated on the situation but these are certainly the most notable changes to the land use system since its creation in 1987.

At a time of significant change for the English Planning system we outline in detail the new permitted development rights that have emerged as well as the changes to the Use Classes Order in this briefing note.

Comprising town planners, architects and architectural assistants our staff bring a wealth of experience from a range of backgrounds and various parts of the UK. Our planners have worked in the public & private sectors, and have excellent working relations with Local Planning Authorities.

For further information and clarification on the amendments to the Use Classes Order, Rory Bradford from our Planning team explains the changes being made, and the impacts they may have for landowners and business operators in the following short video.

If you have further questions, or to discuss a specific building or site please don’t hesitate to contact us for a free 30 minute consultation to discuss your project.

Please click here to download the slides that accompany this video.

You can also download a summary of the 2020 Use Classes Order amendments here.

Main Image: Thanks to Cactus Images

Planning Design invests in Sheffield

PDP_Sheffield

Planning & Design have made a significant investment to their presence in Sheffield with a move to new premises and several key appointments.

Housed in a former 1930s’ car showroom, Planning & Design now reside in The Workstation, Sheffield’s leading business centre for creative talent and innovation in the heart of the city’s thriving Cultural Industries Quarter.

Located less than five minutes from Sheffield train station, The Workstation is home to some of Sheffield’s most exciting cultural, creative and digital businesses with Planning & Design joining renowned design studios, high growth tech firms, award winning theatre companies and filmmakers.

Proximity to the train station also affords easy access to both the group’s main office located in Derby city centre, and clients nationwide.

Leading the Sheffield office will be Michael Bamford. A chartered town planning consultant, Michael started with Planning & Design in 2015 and carved out his early career with the group. Having left the company in early 2018 to work with a National Consultancy based in Sheffield, he returned to Planning & Design this summer and takes the lead on the operation of our Sheffield Office.

Transferring from the Derby office to join Michael will be Graduate Planner Harry Capstick. Having completed his undergraduate degree in Town Planning and Geography at Sheffield Hallam University, he initially joined the team in June 2017, where he completed a 6-month work placement. Upon finishing his degree, Harry re-joined the team in July 2019.

As well as both Harry and Michael having worked and studied in the city, Planning & Design also has a close connection with Sheffield, having long maintained an office in the city and with numerous clients and projects in the region.

“The Sheffield City Region provides real opportunities for growth and development. The city has close links with the Peak District National Park and a long history of high tech engineering. We are excited to be opening a larger office in the city to meet the demand for town planning and architecture. The Region is forward thinking, it is looking for sustainable growth and is open to meeting the challenges of Climate Change and Brexit.” says Jonathan Jenkin, Managing Director of Planning & Design.

Comprising town planners, architects and architectural assistants the staff at Planning & Design bring a wealth of experience from a range of backgrounds and various parts of the UK. Our planners have worked in the public & private sectors, and have excellent working relations with Local Planning Authorities. Our team of RIBA Chartered Architects and Architectural Assistants have a wealth of experience working with homeowners, developers and the public sector.

“We are looking forward to welcoming existing clients to our new home in Sheffield, and to creating new relationships in the city, and across the region, says Michael Bamford.

“Sheffield is home to a rich architectural heritage, with iconic developments such as Park Hill as well as innovative urban renewal, as demonstrated by developments such as can be seen at Kelham Island and at the Workstation. We are looking forward to being a part of Sheffield’s future development.”

Please contact Michael if you require assistance with planning applications, appeals or local plan representations or require advice on lawful development certificates or development appraisals, michael.bamford@planningdesign.co.uk or telephone 0114 221 0618.

Photo (L-R): Harry Capstick, Richard Pigott, Jonathan Jenkin, Michael Bamford, Jon Millhouse.

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