‘Wiltshire Council has published a Draft Wiltshire Design Guide for comment, the consultation period runs until 30th July. Chapman Lily Planning have reviewed the document and will put forward comments to the Council for consideration.
The overarching thrust is to encourage pre-application submissions, with the draft guide mainly referencing existing national guidance, and suggests submission of such things as; a Movement Plan, a Green and Blue Infrastructure (GBI) Plan, and requires minimum garden and balcony areas, and compliance with ‘Secured by Design’ standards . Applicants are ‘encouraged’ to submit a sustainable construction checklist to support how the proposal would result in a sustainable home – e.g. incorporation of low carbon heat source / heat pump, enhanced specification glazing (triple glazed), increased wall insulation, underfloor insulation futureproof space for battery storage and on drawings specify the are of glazing as a % of total floor area.’ The council are requesting that planning drawings must include details of all visible items on façades and roofs, i.e. pipes, ventilation, flues, lighting, meter boxes, heat pumps, photovoltaics and roof plant, to demonstrate these have been incorporated sensitively – they believe these matters should not be conditioned.
Alan Davies (Associate Director) commented ‘Yet another council following the route of attempting to improve the energy efficiency of new dwellings through the planning application process requiring additional documents to be submitted to the Council as part of the application validation. Whilst laudable in its intentions, every Council now seems to have differing requirements and specifications – and will they ever be checked to see if they are implemented and maintained? Surely this is best dealt with by a national unified standard, implemented and checked through the construction process through the existing Building Regulations system? And requiring minute levels of detail on a planning application (rather than by condition) considerably increases the up front costs of the application – with no assurance of an approval’
One aspect to be aware of is that the Council has produced a document entitled ‘Guidance for Neighbourhood Planning within Wiltshire – integrating High Quality Design’ therefore applicants should always have regard to the requirements of any Neighbourhood Plan when preparing schemes.