Borough of Poole: Pure Town Planning recently won an interesting appeal in the Borough of Poole to secure a redesign for a previously approved replacement dwelling.
We secured the original consent back in 2012 to demolish the original dwelling and erect a replacement. But then the neighbours of our client threatened action under the “Right to Light” law (technically the Prescription Act 1832) and our client decided to take the opportunity to eliminate the problem and improve the design at the same time. The difficulty was that the Community Infrastructure Levy was introduced in Poole and any new consent would be subject to CIL (to the tune of £11k in this case!). However minor amendments to approvals granted prior to CIL are not subject to CIL other than the difference between the approved scheme and the amended proposal (in this case none). So we lodged the new scheme as a minor material amendment to the earlier approval. The Borough of Poole turned the application down only because they considered that the difference was more than “minor”.
Pure Town Planning was instructed to lodge a planning appeal against the refusal. Meanwhile we obtained a new full planning consent for the revised scheme. The Inspector made the decision to allow the minor material amendment appeal seeing no reason to refuse the application on the Council’s grounds.
If you have an approved scheme which you would like to amend talk to Pure Town Planning about the best way to apply.