Planning application drawing vs satellite view

[F i F]

Just been notified of a nearby planning application.
Think it generally won't affect us, but it might certainly affect our immediate neighbour so going to make a decision on whether to make any comment on the application as moral support.

Anyway I looked at the application online, and the supposed to be scale drawing of the site didn't particularly fit with my impression of the available space in this garden to build a new 3 bedroom house with access , parking space etc.

So I fired up Google maps, took the satellite view, and assuming all boundaries are in the right place, and that hedges etc are wider than infinitesimally thin boundary lines, the satellite image bears no relation to the drawing in terms of relative areas.

What looks like a feasible project on the drawing, just looks plain stupid on the ground, or at least from the image.

So my question is whether the satellite images have some strange perspective, or is it more likely that the drawing is :cough: not to scale. :cough:

[Mr Whippy]

The aerial imagery generally lines up really nicely on flat things on relatively flat ground.

The problem is something like a garden which is maybe 15m wide, with hedges that might be 2m tall, shot at an angle of maybe 20deg off the vertical from an aircraft, you start to have the hedge looking wider than it might be as you start to see the side of the hedge and the top of it as one item, making it look artificially wide.

Another issue might be how they seam images together. Sometimes roads and tree lines, or even hedge lines, can be used to weld imagery together, so on one side of a flat feature trees lean one way steeply, and then at the other they lean the other way. Looks very odd when you see it, and can make it hard to gauge much about the spatial properties at ground level much harder!



You could also argue that land which is sloping up or down hill will not be corrected perfectly in the top-down projection. Back when doing carto for DEFRA we used to ignore the fact that fields on hills would have greater surface area because they generally said a sloping field will have more wasted area the steeper it is (iffy logic but the only workable system)
If the area in question is on a slope in real life it may look bigger than the plan makes out. OR, the plan may be drawn from tape measurements which are longer, but the top-down view you are referencing makes it look apparently smaller.


If you are making concessions for such things then the 2d drawing may be questionable. Is the 2d drawing referencing the OS land line data or something? Or is it drawn from scratch? I believe if they reproduce OS data then they need to say they have on the plan. So if it isn't referenced then it's anyone's guess what their source data is and how reliable it is.


Dave

Edited by Mr Whippy on Wednesday 24th August 16:26

[F i F]

The plans are drawn from scratch and no source data is referenced, also the new property will be right up onto the boundary line of our neighbours.

The drawing does have a note

"Where building up to boundaries the adjacent owner is to be informed under the terms of the Party Wall Act 1998 and its provisions followed. Where building over boundaries the adjacent owner is to be served notice under section 65 of the Town and Country Planning act 1990"

Is that a normal note to find on a drawing or is it indicative that they are squeezing a very small quart into a pint pot.

Looking at it some more, and the elevations it's going to a really tiny place squeezed in between much bigger properties.

As I say, it won't materially affect us, I'm just amazed somebody could think of shoehorning a property in there.

ETA, the area is generally flat, but there is a slope up from the road to the "building line" and it certainly seems as if the drawing has been deliberately done to make the space available seem quite large, when most of it will essentially be remaining as verge and footpath.

Feel some sympathy for neighbours as their garden will now be completely overlooked, and they will lose light and sun in the mornings.

Edited by F i F on Wednesday 24th August 16:42

[Mr Whippy]

I have no idea on the planning regs side of things.

I assume an architect has drawn it all up, and that the council is signing off on those documents. It'll be a bit dodgy later if there are problems with the plans and their accuracy! You never know though.


As per building in gardens for new dwellings, weren't planning regs starting to change quite a lot in that regard to basically make it much much harder to do? I know Selby district council did that in the last 18 months or so. I doubt anyone would put an application in if it has changed for their local area and wouldn't now be allowed, but again, you never know.


If I were the neighbour to them I'd be undertaking my own assessment and clarification of the boundaries and regs.

Does the neighbour actually care? The main reason regs were changing in this regard was because of the impact on areas of increasing housing density without consideration for the wider area (ie, neighbours, transport links, access, amenities etc)

Dave

[F i F]

This is all third hand as away from home now but according 'er indoors the neighbour does care and has already been round to see what we think.

I've had a look at the application form and can see many factual errors in the detail without having to look too hard; which leads one to wonder if their measurements are as accurate.

[Mr Whippy]

F i F said:

This is all third hand as away from home now but according 'er indoors the neighbour does care and has already been round to see what we think.

I've had a look at the application form and can see many factual errors in the detail without having to look too hard; which leads one to wonder if their measurements are as accurate.

This is where digging out the searches from when you bought your house is handy, as there are loads of maps from all manners of different sources, which will help you decide what is accurate and what isn't etc!

It doesn't help that on most stuff pre-vector (raster maps), lines even at the best scale are about 70cm wide! And then most vector maps were drawn on-top of these crappy rasters, often by people who were not the most considerate cartographers (seen plenty of stupid discrepancies that a half intelligent person would have corrected)

Boundary disputes are a mine-field and horrible.

If the data you have is raster sourced, and their map looks vector sourced, then it'd be handy to try get access to a printout of the landline vector data for your street/area (now branded "OS Mastermap local" or something)

Dave

[blueg33]

You need to use promap to check the site, you could also use the Land Registry and print out a copy of the title plan for £4.

Promap will cahrge you about £26 to print off a decent scale drawing of a property.

Personally, i would raise the issue with the Planning Officer and remind them that if the application documents are not as required for a valid planning application then the Council are exposed to a Judicial Review (high court challenge) as they have failed in terms of proceedure.

TBH if the plans are incorrect then the application shouldn't have been registered in the first place.

If you let me have the application number and local council, I will double check it for you on promap to see if it looks right

Nick

[MJG280]

A lot of councils have a public version of their own mapping system on their website to show their land ownership but also includes their whole area. Its just a case of finding it! Try searching for maps or GIS

[Skyedriver]

A recent application I have been "involved" with as a neighbour: another neighbour complained to the PO that the lands apparently under the ownership of the applicant according to the submitted drawings were actually not so but in joint ownership or owned by someone else. PO replied to sneighbour that they weren't interested, that it was a case for Land Registry and for them to argue.
My opinion of Planners is not particularly high, based purely on personal experience of the two faced, easily swayed by persons who they mave a particular association with, self opinionated, underknowledgable of local situations characters

[blueg33]

Skyedriver said:

A recent application I have been "involved" with as a neighbour: another neighbour complained to the PO that the lands apparently under the ownership of the applicant according to the submitted drawings were actually not so but in joint ownership or owned by someone else. PO replied to sneighbour that they weren't interested, that it was a case for Land Registry and for them to argue.
My opinion of Planners is not particularly high, based purely on personal experience of the two faced, easily swayed by persons who they mave a particular association with, self opinionated, underknowledgable of local situations characters

The PO was absolutely correct as land legals have very limited bearing on planning. Except that notice has to be served on the landowner if he/she is not the applicant.

[Mr Whippy]

blueg33 said:

Skyedriver said:

A recent application I have been "involved" with as a neighbour: another neighbour complained to the PO that the lands apparently under the ownership of the applicant according to the submitted drawings were actually not so but in joint ownership or owned by someone else. PO replied to sneighbour that they weren't interested, that it was a case for Land Registry and for them to argue.
My opinion of Planners is not particularly high, based purely on personal experience of the two faced, easily swayed by persons who they mave a particular association with, self opinionated, underknowledgable of local situations characters

The PO was absolutely correct as land legals have very limited bearing on planning. Except that notice has to be served on the landowner if he/she is not the applicant.

Does the PO have to serve the notice? I guess they should be interested if the applicant assumes that it is their land exclusively?
But then I guess that backs up Skyedrivers view of the planning officers. Rather than make it their business to help speed up proceedings or make the right people aware more quickly, they just tick boxes and wait for the st to hit the fan weeks down the line when everyone has become more stressed over issues etc.


Blueg33, is there any chance of a rough sample of the promap data, or something from land registry? Just wondering if the stuff you get in your average house buying searches is of lesser quality than that possessed by land registry?

For my house the lines are about 70-80cm thick and not really very indicative of what things actually look like here. Ie, buildings that line up in real life don't in the map etc... makes me wonder how reliable the maps are that is all

Dave

[blueg33]

Mr Whippy said:

blueg33 said:

Skyedriver said:

A recent application I have been "involved" with as a neighbour: another neighbour complained to the PO that the lands apparently under the ownership of the applicant according to the submitted drawings were actually not so but in joint ownership or owned by someone else. PO replied to sneighbour that they weren't interested, that it was a case for Land Registry and for them to argue.
My opinion of Planners is not particularly high, based purely on personal experience of the two faced, easily swayed by persons who they mave a particular association with, self opinionated, underknowledgable of local situations characters

The PO was absolutely correct as land legals have very limited bearing on planning. Except that notice has to be served on the landowner if he/she is not the applicant.

Does the PO have to serve the notice? I guess they should be interested if the applicant assumes that it is their land exclusively?
But then I guess that backs up Skyedrivers view of the planning officers. Rather than make it their business to help speed up proceedings or make the right people aware more quickly, they just tick boxes and wait for the st to hit the fan weeks down the line when everyone has become more stressed over issues etc.


Blueg33, is there any chance of a rough sample of the promap data, or something from land registry? Just wondering if the stuff you get in your average house buying searches is of lesser quality than that possessed by land registry?

For my house the lines are about 70-80cm thick and not really very indicative of what things actually look like here. Ie, buildings that line up in real life don't in the map etc... makes me wonder how reliable the maps are that is all

Dave

Its up to the applicant to serve the notice on the land owners, but if not done then the application is exposed to judicial review. But that would be unlikely to change the planning decision as the Court would base its decision on whether the revised information would have altered the decision.

Planning Officers can be good or bad as in all professions, but TBH land legals are a big subject and it shouldn't be up to then to sort it out, after all they are paid by the tax payer.

I would have to pay to get stuff from the land registry, but you can go to landreg.gov.uk and get copies of title plans for £4.00. These will be copies of the title plans and are usually as good as those plans for most purposes, unless the property is huge.

Promap gives large scale Ordnance Survey plans but won't give samples and doesn't show ownerships only lines where boundaries may be.

I am happy to look at Promap online but they charge to print. (they do charge to view but its only a few pence)

Land Registry plans are often inaccurate and we prepare survey plans and then have to prove that the plans are wrong. This is often the case with land that hasn't changed hands very often. The Land Reg are reasonable where it is obvious the plans are faulty.

The quality of search plans varies hugely. I will see if I can post some samples of land reg and promap tomorrow

[Sam_68]

Mr Whippy said:

Blueg33, is there any chance of a rough sample of the promap data, or something from land registry? Just wondering if the stuff you get in your average house buying searches is of lesser quality than that possessed by land registry?

For my house the lines are about 70-80cm thick and not really very indicative of what things actually look like here. Ie, buildings that line up in real life don't in the map etc... makes me wonder how reliable the maps are that is all

Promap data is large scale Ordnance Survey data held electronically. It's available in a variety of formats. You can get it as a .pdf or, more usefully (if you've got the software to handle it), as AutoCAD .dwg or .dxf CAD files.

Difficult to explain on here unless you're familar with CAD, but I'll try:

A line in CAD has no 'thickness' as such; it's an 'electronic' line joining two coordinates, which means that in theory it can be infinitely accurate and if you blow it up to a larger scale, it wil remain just as sharp and easy to measure (instead of a paper plan or .pdf, where if you zoom in/blow it up to a larger scale the lines will get thicker and lose definition).

However, Ordnance Survey Promap data is of variable sources and quality. Some has been measured by modern land surveyors using modern GPS-linked whizz-bang 'total station' surveying equipment, which is accurate to the nearest millimetre. Some of it has been digitised from old Ordnance Survey maps, surveyed by less accurate 'old fashioned' methods, where modern re-survey has not yet taken place, and some (particularly in rural areas) has been drawn up from flown surveys rather than measured by surveyors on the ground, and can be quite inaccurate.

Modern Land Registry title plans (where ownership of the land has changed hands in recent years) are based on Promap data, but are released as .pdf or paper copies at 1:1,250 scale, so lose definition if you try to blow them up to a useful scale like 1:100. In such cases, the red line that defines the title boundary will normally be drawn on top of a boundary feature form the Promap, however, so if you obtain the Promap extract in .dwg or .dxf format, you can interpret the land ownership boundary onto the Promap, then zoom in as far as you like and take measurements to the nearest millimetre, but those measurements will only be as accurate as the survey data on which the map was based.

blueg33 said:

Its up to the applicant to serve the notice on the land owners, but if not done then the application is exposed to judicial review. But that would be unlikely to change the planning decision as the Court would base its decision on whether the revised information would have altered the decision.

It might also be worth mentioning, however, that apart from laying a decision open to Judicial Review, a planning application can be rendered invalid before it is decided if it can be proven that the applicant has failed to serve notice on all the landowners. In practice, this only means that the applicant has got to go back and serve notice on the appropriate landowners and get the application re-validated, but it resets the 'clock' on the application in terms of public consultation periods, so can be used to stall an application (and generally ps off the applicant!) to some extent.

Also, as blueg33 suggests, the decision (whether it is taken by the Planning Authority or whether reviewed by JR) should be based on correct information and to a limited extent land ownership can influence that decision.

Again, I'll probably explain this badly, but I'll try by way of example:

• As has been said previously, there's no reason I can't submit a Planning application that encompasses land that I don't own, provided I serve notice on the landowner, but;
• If my design relies upon that land to make it workable, then the application can fail if the landowner objects.

For example:

• If I show 12 metres from the lounge window of a proposed new house to the boundary a neighbouring back garden, that would almost certainly be deemed acceptable in terms of maintaining privacy and amenity of the neighbouring garden.
• If I don't actually own that land (lets assume that the land ownership boundary is only a couple of metres from the face of my proposed building..) and just draw my application boundary 12 metres from my building, across the middle of the neighbours back garden, and serve notice on them, then it could be deemed perfectly acceptable if the neighbour doesn't object (as far as the Planning system is concerned they would assume that I could deliver that design by buying the necessary land from my neighbour).
• If the neighbour does object, however, the application could very well be deemed unacceptable because the couple of metres distance from the lounge window to the boundary of the land that I do own is inadequate to maintain the privacy and amenity of either property.

Sorry, very long winded explanation...

[blueg33]

Hi Sam

How's the market now? I may be doing a deal with your lot shortly, different office though.

I am glad you did the long explanation about ability to implement the consent, I couldn't face it on the Blackberry.

Nick

[blueg33]

FiF YHM

[F i F]

@blueg33, thanks very much, really helpful and YHM back.

Yesterday I'd found the county GIS data maps and concluded that as they looked rather similar to the application drawing then perhaps the drawing was OK and it turned back to my original post questioning whether the satellite view was misleading, and suspect this is the case.

I know from interior work that when planning a layout of office or house etc, I really do like to do a scale drawing and it's much better for determining what will really fit in. So personally I always like an accurate scale drawing.

This will be a tight fit though.

All very enlightening, thank you very much to all who have contributed on this.

edited to add
Following on from Sam's lengthy but interesting post it seems as if the back door, taking the form of patio doors will be ~2.5 metres from the neighbour's fence. As will also apply to the upstairs windows.

Edited by F i F on Thursday 25th August 10:07

[Mr Whippy]

2.5m from patio doors to fence.

Nice!

Why people build such trash is beyond me. Either make something you'll be proud of or don't bother. Guess the main motivation is money. Part of me thinks these back-garden rabbit-hutch developers won't be making much money in the current housing market climate!

[blueg33]

Mr Whippy said:

2.5m from patio doors to fence.

Nice!

Why people build such trash is beyond me. Either make something you'll be proud of or don't bother. Guess the main motivation is money. Part of me thinks these back-garden rabbit-hutch developers won't be making much money in the current housing market climate!

First rule of anything related to property - "Greed is the motivating factor" this has been apparent with every single deal I have done in 20 odd years regardless of what people say

[Sam_68]

blueg33 said:

How's the market now?

Tough but steady in our Region, generally. We hit our target last year with the second highest number of units we've built, despite a desperate shortage of outlets, and we're in a much more favourable position this year (we've got a fair few sites through Planning and new outlets opening), so we're reasonably chipper, all told.

F i F said:

... it seems as if the back door, taking the form of patio doors will be ~2.5 metres from the neighbour's fence. As will also apply to the upstairs windows.

Particularly if that upstairs window is to a bedroom (rather than a landing or bathroom) and particularly if the other side of the neighbour's fence is what you'd consider to be 'private' amenity area (ie. back garden, not exposed to the public domain of the street), then I'd be objecting on the grounds of privacy and detriment to amenity, if I were them.

There aren't any 'statutory' minima, and local policy varies from authority to authority, but as a general rule you'd be looking for a minimum of about 10-11 metres from a 'principal' window on a habitable room to the boundary on an existing neighbouring private amenity space (it's usually acceptable to make relationships from new dwelling to new dwelling within a developmnt a bit tighter, since Planners will accept that the principle of 'caveat emptor' applies... if you don't like the close relationship, you don't have to buy the house).

[F i F]

Sam_68 said:

F i F said:

... it seems as if the back door, taking the form of patio doors will be ~2.5 metres from the neighbour's fence. As will also apply to the upstairs windows.

Particularly if that upstairs window is to a bedroom (rather than a landing or bathroom) and particularly if the other side of the neighbour's fence is what you'd consider to be 'private' amenity area (ie. back garden, not exposed to the public domain of the street), then I'd be objecting on the grounds of privacy and detriment to amenity, if I were them.

There aren't any 'statutory' minima, and local policy varies from authority to authority, but as a general rule you'd be looking for a minimum of about 10-11 metres from a 'principal' window on a habitable room to the boundary on an existing neighbouring private amenity space (it's usually acceptable to make relationships from new dwelling to new dwelling within a developmnt a bit tighter, since Planners will accept that the principle of 'caveat emptor' applies... if you don't like the close relationship, you don't have to buy the house).

Two upstairs windows, both bedrooms, somewhat tricky to scale off the screen but using the scale printed on the drawing and measuring shortest line to boundary, the two rooms are ~2.5m and a gnat's over 4m to the boundary, and immediately overlooking a very private area not visible from anywhere, unless I stand on a chair on top of our patio table or perhaps swing off the Sky dish mounting bracket.

I think if you take the same sort of measurement from the existing property you can get the nearest bedroom window to the boundary it's about 7-8 metres but then an area of the garden which is quite enclosed even from that view. The proposed development would look straight down onto a private patio area.

I feel sorry for them, as they are only ones directly affected, all the others of the 14 consultees if they are being objective like I'm trying to be, aren't that affected tbh.

I'm sure that if the original developers could have squeezed an extra property in they would have considering the gaps between the houses.