I’ve extolled the benefits of engaging early and well concerning planning applications and you can read Planning Tip #8 specifically on this topic HERE. And you can see what Mayo County Council has to say about pre-planning HERE

We’ve recently been notified of planning permission on the Passive House (planned) below:

This application took nearly a year of pre-planning and I now have the following observations to make regarding pre-planning:

• Your pre-planning meeting can result in an informal meeting which is basically just a chat. Or a formal pre-planning application.

• The formal pre-planning requires you to complete a form (the one for Mayo County Council is available HERE

• The formal pre-planning has to be assigned a planner who has to look at site and proposals and give a written appraisal of their opinion.

• The formal pre-planning guidance will cover a lot but it may still not cover everything. The response may not take into account ground conditions, road access or any archaeological issues for example.

• The submission for pre-planning can result in the same amount of work for a full planning application. This was the case in the above example. Therefore the architectural fee should be essentially the same.

• The formal pre-planning can take the same amount of time as a full planning application. This was the case in the above example.

• The benefit of the formal pre-planning is that a lot of items that could come up later as problems are covered at this stage and addressed earlier than at the planning stage. This again was the case in the above example; hence no requests were made for Further Information as all the documentation was already submitted.

• Even if you opt for an informal pre-planning, you have checked a box on the application form to say you’ve had one (see below) which always looks good:

Comments as always welcome…