Another packed out week races by bringing September and Q3 to a close.
How’s it going for you?
How are you tracking against your 2017 goals? What might you need to review, tweak, stop doing or double down on?
This week we spent Tuesday with our fellow Scottish VIP’s. Another fantastic afternoon where we shared ideas around the lunch table and heard from Kevin Whelan about the overwhelming benefits of a SSAS when it comes to investing. Thank you to Aniko for another hugely productive mentoring session- Chris and I have come away with more clarity on our guiding vision and with another handful of meaningful actions to work on.
I then spent the last two days of the week in Devon to view our development site and meet our Architect with our Development Discovery team. This was another two hours well invested with a mentor, Alan Christie, and one of our power team professionals. Big thanks to our Architect Rebecca Fearnley, of Fearnley Lott Architects, who talked us through the pre-planning process she is skillfully managing on our behalf.
There were a number of key learns so I thought it might be helpful to share them here. I know not the most exciting topic but hopefully some useful nuggets there for those interested.
[First as a bit of context, we already have detailed planning for 11 apartment units and we have made the decision to optimise our site by increasing the size of each unit, adding a few more units and adding garages for each. To do this we have invested some time and funds into a pre-planning application.]
Key learning points about the pre-planning app process:
- In short, the purpose of a pre-planning app is to reach a point of agreement in principle before submitting the new application. However, the pre-planning decision is only the opinion of one person, it then needs to go to statutory consultation.
- You are allowed up to three meetings with the Planning Officer to get to this point.
- In our case, after presenting revised drawings at the first meeting, the planner came back with a few comments to address on design, scale and massing (meaning the 3D projection of the building) and a revised Affordable Housing (AF) contribution. These are items our architect can help us tweak in order to satisfy the comments. For example, one of the ways to reduce the perceived ‘mass’ of the building is to sink it 0.5m into the ground.
- By increasing the number of units we will naturally attract a larger AF contribution. We learned that the usual policy in rural areas (although it varies slightly around the country by Local Plan) is that you can add a gain of 5 units to the site before triggering AF. In other words if you are starting with five units on a site and looking to create 10 in total, you would typically be clear of AF contribs, but if you are creating 12 then expect an AF contrib.
- If it is a commercial building you have bought to demolish and rebuild or convert, there is a new policy in place called vacant building credit that can be used.
Vacant building credit was introduced to promote development on brownfield sites. It allows the floorspace of existing buildings that are to be redeveloped to be offset against the calculations for section 106 affordable housing requirements (whether financial contribution or provision). It applies to any building that has not been abandoned and is brought back into any lawful use, or is demolished to be replaced by a new building. http://www.michelmores.com/news-views/news/planning-briefing-vacant-building-credit-and-reductions-affordable-housing
- If AF and section 106 contributions are looking a bit heavy you could look into providing the council with a viability report, which is essentially a worked through calculation showing the magnitude of contributions being requested by the council are too high and result in the site no longer being economically viable. Councils are reasonable and understand that developers need a margin of around 20%. The viability report will be sent to the District Valuer to consider alongside the plans.
- An intro to SAPs – SAP stands for ‘Standard Assessment Procedure’. It is the only official, government approved system for assessing the energy rating for a new home. SAP calculations are a requirement of the Building Regulations, and are required for all newly built dwellings in the UK. We learned that oil is not the most efficient and the best way to pass the required thermal modelling is with mains gas or air source heat pumps. The heating source will need to be built into the viability, and of course design, and you will need to know this when you go in for planning.
- On cladding – obviously a topic under close scrutiny following recent events. Any cladding on a building needs a BBA certificate to prove performance testing. We are looking at cladding options from approved manufacturers like Trespa