If you wish to make a significant change to land or buildings you need Planning Consent from the Local Authority ie "The Council" who probably reside in the town hall in the area concerned. So, if you are in South Manchester for example, you probably need to apply to Trafford Council.
By a "significant change" I mean something like building houses on vacant land or turning a warehouse into flats. In these circumstances, you need an expert planner to apply on your behalf. In the good old days you could have just done it yourself but these days it has become hideously complicated and tedious.
Your expert will round up a whole team of other experts with solemn faces to carry out investigations that will make you angry even before you have to pay their bills. And when the bills arrive I guarantee you will be very angry - environmental impact studies, bat studies, acoustic reports, traffic reports. The list goes on forever.
But what about old buildings which were around before Governments and Local Authorities decided that there needed to be some control over what people did in buildings?
Technically, you can ask the Local Authority what the established use is for the building you are acquiring or you can rely on common sense. If it looks like a shop, walks like a shop and sounds like a shop, then it's a shop and nobody is going to argue.
But if "everybody knows" it's a house and you start using it as a shop then you will have a problem. This goes back to a fundamental principle of law and property, which you will not find in any text-books. This is the "don't piss people off" principle. If you piss people off you can expect real trouble in due course.
If you want to put up a sign on the front of your shop, you probably need planning consent. Does anybody bother to apply? What do you think?
Or maybe you are doing major repairs? Years ago we re-clad a 600,000 sq ft building (visible from the moon) without any kind of consent. Everybody was delighted and we never had any kind of problem. Obviously, this was just a repair and we did not need consent. And that bridge we took down over the weekend was dangerous and this was an emergency. But most important of all was that nobody was pissed off. Does that make them pissed on - probably not.
But conversely, on a couple of occasions we have had a letter from the local authorty saying we can remove trees but as soon as the chain saws started up, all Hell broke loose and within hours we were drowning in Tree Preservation Orders.
But what will happen if you just ignore all the regulations and just do it? Well, if you piss people off, expect serious problems.
Local auhoriites are run by local politicians who drink in the local pubs and need votes. In turn, the officials are employed by the Council and they need their jobs. In general they like to live quiet, unstressful lives but if people are screaming then the politicians will have to do something and they will tell the officials to do something and the officials will do something.
In the worst case, they will serve a formal notice on you. You would then retrospectively apply to the Local Authority for consent. If this is turned down you can appeal to the Secretary of State (a Government Official). If the appeal fails then in the ultimate worst case, you may be forced to undoe whatever it is you have done eg demolish a house you have built.
Many years ago I owned a big chunk of land in a small town with high unemployment. Some kind of Coal Board scheme (it was a mining area) bought a couple of acres from me and built a complex of small workshops. Hurrah!
I assumed that the rest of the land was now zoned for Industrial Use but apparently not - in due course the Local Authority zoned it for open space leisure (I forget the precise wording) which meant it was without value - although the local gypsies loved it
Fifteen years later, I was approached by the Local Authority who told me "we would like to see your land used for housing". I mean, seriously? It turned out that they owned the land behind mine and wanted a route to the main road through my land! Yes, really.
So, we applied for housing consent to a Local Authority who had already told me thay wanted to see it used for housing. And guess what - they turned down the application on the grounds of potential flooding.
So, we appealed to the Secretary of State. The appeal was heard right in the middle of the worst floods the country had ever seen - the people who went to the appeal probably had to go by boat. And guess what - we won the appeal and lived happily ever after.
Go figure
Modified on 23/08/2019 at 08:59:49 by ℗ Bob Cory