Letter from Planning Officer
April 17, 2006 | Leave a Comment |
Today we received an email from Jon Howarth with an attached scan of a letter received from the Skye Planning Officer. The letter stated the following:
- The Planning Officer is happy with the location of the house. This basically removes the issue with the inconsistency between the drawing and the actual house location noted by Jon Howarth and James MacQueen while pegging out the exact location of the house.
- The inspection showed that the size of the bell mouth of the access road was too small. This means that Hughie has to do additional work to enlarge this space.
- There was a vague comment on the materials to be used on the outside finish of the house. The suggested materials in the letter are however EXACTLY the materials mentioned on the submitted plans for obtaining detailed planning permission. Probably some minor oversight? Who knows, but we do not take this point as a critical issue.
Furthermore, we’re steering towards a small change in the design of the house by adding Velux windows in the attic area covering the central rectangular part of the house. These windows will add loads of opportunities to the house without adding too much cost.
Doing a bespoke design
December 10, 2005 | Leave a Comment |
After some investigations we found out that none of the SkyeHomes standard designs would be a suitable fit for us: either their design was not allowed within the planning constraints of our plot or we did not like the design. So, we decided to go with a bespoke design.A bespoke design means you have to hire an architect and they generally don’t come cheap. The fee for an architect tends to be something between 7% and 15% of the buildcost…
SkyeHomes then pointed out the possibility of doing a bespoke design for us. Their deal is fairly simple: you pay a limited sum for the house design and they retain the copyrights of the design and add your housedesign to their portfolio. An elegant win-win situation, so we agreed…
So, this limited sum… what is it. Well, that part of the deal becomes clear as you move along in the design process. We had to pay the following cost:
- Bespoke design fee and preparation of planning drawings. You pay £500 of this as an engagement fee to SkyeHomes.
- Provisions of Building warrant drawings, SAP calculations and Engineer’s Certificate. This amount depends on the actual size of your house, so the bigger the house, the higher the amount.
- Work carried out by the SkyeHomes house designer for preparing and submitting plans and drawings to the Highland Council for detailed planning permission and building warrant.
The complete bespoke design cost us a little bit over £5,000 excluding VAT. An architect would have cost us at least twice that amount. This is in our opinion a very good deal… and SkyeHomes can add another nice design to their portfolio.
While talking to SkyeHomes we researched other suppliers of timber frame kits in the UK and found out that SkyeHomes was a bit more expensive in their kit pricing (you can easily compare them by doing a cost/sqm comparison).
However if you talk to other suppliers - we talked to Potton - and tell them that you’re planning for a house on Skye, things get a bit awkward. We got the feeling from two extensive phonecalls with them, that they’re not particulary keen on working all the way up north and that they’re not too familiar with the local way of business. It was our estimate that - in the end - our project would not be significantly cheaper.
Detailed Planning Permission has arrived
September 21, 2005 | Leave a Comment |
We received an email from Archie MacDonald - our house designer from SkyeHomes - that the formal Detailed Planning Permission finally has arrived. This means that the Highland Council has formally granted us the right to build our house.
What does this mean? Well, we can now start with all preparations of the plot like bringing in the services (water and electricity) and groundwork (access road, excavations for the foundations). All in all the total process took well over 3 months! The original request was submitted to the Highland Council on the 12th of April, which sums up to 14 weeks and 4 days… wow…. they really scrutinize your plans!
However, this is only 50% of the paperwork done. We’re also still waiting on the Building Warrant. This document states that the house design is approved on all technical matters and that it’s a sound construction, meeting all the technical building regulations and standards in the UK.
Building warrant drawings
September 21, 2005 | Leave a Comment |
The design of the house is the first step in the process of building your own house. The next step is adding information to the design so that you specify the structure of the whole thing. This process results in drawings that allow all parties further down the road to figure out what exactly must be done, and - very important - allows you to obtain a building warrant for your house, which is an approval on the technical design of the house where the planning permission is an approval for the visual [art.
The building warrant is an essential document which basically states that the structural design of the house meets all building regulations of the UK. This document is, together with your planning permission, an essential document. No building warrant… no house! Below some clippings from the drawings made by SkyeHomes.
Building warrant arrived…
July 31, 2005 | Leave a Comment |
Besides our Detailed Planning Permission we now also have our building warrant. This arrived on the last day of our holiday and Archie MacDonald really made an effort in getting this document for us. It appears that the northern part of Skye is suffering from an administrative backlog regarding the Building Warrants. Luckily Archie knows how to pull the strings a bit!!
As with the Detailed Planning Permission, the Building Warrant is a required document for one to have before one starts building. It states that the design - specifically the technical aspects - meet with all UK standards and regulations. Physically it’s a green piece of paper from the Highland Council with a set of drawings of the house. Each document is signed off by a Highland Council official.
Now that we have both Detailed Planning Permission and the Building Warrant, we have all formal paperwork we need to start building the house. As Archie put it: “You’re ready to Rock & Roll!!”.
Site plan
April 15, 2005 | Leave a Comment |
Before building is allowed, a site plan is drawn that shows the position of the relevant elements of the development positioned on the site: things like driveway, septic tank, water pipes and obviously the house itself. The site plan, together with the detailed house plans, are submitted to the Planning Officer for detailed planning permission.
This drawing has an additional element (see top left): it also shows the profile of the plot with the level of the roof and the level of the road. The planning officer does not want the top level of the roof to exceed the level of the road.
This is remarkable, as this requirement is not in the formal Outline Planning Permission document. In my opinion this only shows how careful you must be when buying a plot: the documents of the OPP don’t say it all…
Floorplan
April 11, 2005 | Leave a Comment |
In this design, SkyeHomes tried to capture the changes a typical Highland house goes through over time. The initial house comprised the central rectangular shape: the kitchen, dining room, and one bedroom.Over time the owners added extensions to the house: an extended kitchen to the front, the sides with a separate lounge end another guest room with en-suite and to the back a larger master bedroom with large en-suite bathroom. This design gives the house a ‘+’ shape with the north / south legs slightly out of position to make it not too clinical.
The floorplan clearly shows the central rectangular structure of the house comprising the kitchen, dinging room, utility room, entrance and bedroom 3.
The living room, master bedroom and bedroom 2 give the impression that they were added in a later stage. This gives the design a lively and a-symmetrical effect which we think is very nice.
Elevations
April 11, 2005 | Leave a Comment |
The house is positioned in such a way that we enjoy the beauty of the plot as much as possible. Still it’s situated in a secluded spot, close to an elevated part, so we hope to receive some natural shelter here during those fierce gales in Skye winters.
Also, the sitting room extension is lowered a bit, thus following the height difference in the plot as well.
These image show the back of the house, facing the south side of the plot and the front of the house facing the north side of the plot. The latter really takes advantage of the incredible views by having lots of windows. The three windows in the front is the kitchen; to the left the dining room and the sitting room. To the right of the kitchen are windows of bedrooms.
Planning permission
April 9, 2005 | Leave a Comment |
Building in the UK is governed by planning officers and getting planning permission. There are two stages: outline planning en detailed planning permission.
Outline Planning Permission gives you the general right to build something, given the restrictions laid down in your permission. Detailed Planning Permission gives you the right to build a specific house, with all of its relevant parameters detailed.
Planning permission is crucial! If you consider buying a plot and you’re not sure about possibilites regarding planning permission, do not hesitate to acquire local consult. Also consider that having outline planning permission, might well impose serious constraints regarding the type of house you are allowed to build.
On Skye the planning consent is given by the Highland Council. Planning requests are handled by a Planning Officer.
While waiting for the planning permission to come in, it became apparent that there’s a huge backlog on the island in handling all the requests. While it’s usual to receive a response to your request within 8 weeks, ours took well over 12 weeks.
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