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General => The Common Room => Topic started by: Thornwood on Tuesday 31 July 18 20:43 BST (UK)
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A property I am interested in was demolished at some point between 1973 and 1976. The local paper called for its demolition as it was an eyesore and dangerous but after trawling their archive between those dates I can find no article about it having actually been pulled down. Locals only seem to remember it going but not sure when exactly. Where can I find this information. Do people need planning permission for a demolition in the same way they need it for building?
Thanks for any help.
Thornwood.
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Have you contacted the Building regs/Planning dept in the area to see what info they hold?
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Do people need planning permission for a demolition in the same way they need it for building?
I don't believe so, unless it's listed. A few buildings in my area have been demolished by the owners with no justification or explanation. Of course if other buildings adjoin - if it is part of a terrace, or if a nuisance might be caused, that's another matter - but these were on an old industrial estate.
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Thanks, I'll try that.
Thornwoof
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Do people need planning permission for a demolition in the same way they need it for building?
My understanding is - Yes, planning permission is required.
There are a great many issues that the Council would be interested in.
- Change of use from say Residential to brownfield,
- Change in Rateable Value,
- Health & Safety - demolition, disposal of rubble, possible asbestos, security from theft, security from children, breathing hazards because of dust, disruption to traffic and pedestrians, safely securing water and gas and electricity and effluent,
- Visual amenity and ongoing safety after demolition.
I would be greatly shocked if the Council were not involved at every stage of the process from start to finish and after.
Regards
Chas
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You should be able to make an appointment to view the records of the site at your local authority's Planning Department. Just phone or email with details of the site in which you are interested, make an appointment, and they will have the relevant records available for you to search.
Regards
GS
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I complained to a councillor about one demolition I'd seen, and he said there was very little they could do. I suppose cash-strapped councils feel there is little point in risking the costs of taking the owners to court after the fact - especially if the owner is a billionaire property developer with friends in very high places.
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Do people need planning permission for a demolition in the same way they need it for building?
My understanding is - Yes, planning permission is required.
There are a great many issues that the Council would be interested in.
- Change of use from say Residential to brownfield,
- Change in Rateable Value,
- Health & Safety - demolition, disposal of rubble, possible asbestos, security from theft, security from children, breathing hazards because of dust, disruption to traffic and pedestrians, safely securing water and gas and electricity and effluent,
- Visual amenity and ongoing safety after demolition.
I would be greatly shocked if the Council were not involved at every stage of the process from start to finish and after.
Regards
Chas
(My emphasis) Where does that understanding come from?
I can assure you that planning permisson is not required to demolish a building (certainly not in the 70's). Planning permission is required to carry out "development" which is legally defined to include building, mining or engineering operations or the making of a material change in the use of land.
A local planning authority grants planning permission subject to a condition that developemt must be begun within a specified period. A developer implements that permission and they do not have to inform the planning authority when they start or when they clear the site in order to carry out the development.
From a practical aspect, I see little point in asking the planning authority when the building was demolished as they would have had no cause to record the information in the first place. Any personal knowledge of people working at the authority at the time will no longer exist - they would by now have either retired or have died.
You may also like to note that, unlike planning records, building regulation files are not open to public inspection.
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My understanding comes from here -
Planning Portal - Application Type Guidance
V1 England
Application for Prior Notification of Proposed Demolition
Schedule 2, Part 11 of The Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) (England) Order 2015
The Application for Prior Notification of Proposed Demolition form should be used for proposals to demolish a building or structure.
Demolition of a building is generally not classed as ‘development ’ and therefore planning permission is not usually needed. However, the demolition of certain buildings will need approval from the local planning authority beforehand.
Planning controls over demolition do not apply to the demolition of various buildings - including listed buildings, buildings in conservation areas, which are under 50 cubic metres capacity, fences or enclosures outside conservation areas and any other building except a dwelling house or one next to a dwelling house.
Although such works are known as ‘permitted development’, before you can carry out the
demolition you must apply to the planning authority for a determination as to whether
prior approval will be required for the method of demolition and any proposed restoration
of the site.
The purpose of this control is to give local planning authorities the opportunity to regulate the details of demolition in order to minimise the impact of that activity on local amenity. The form does not apply where demolition is:
• on land which is the subject of planning permission for its redevelopment, granted on
an application, or deemed to be granted, under Part III of the Act
• required or permitted to be carried out by or under any enactment
• required to be carried out by virtue of a relevant obligation
It is often helpful to discuss your proposal with your local authority before you send in your
application – this is known as pre-application advice. Your local authority will normally have
details of how to go about this on its website.
Regards
Chas
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As there seems to different views on this subject I will contact the planning office, however thanks to all people who have taken the time to answer my query.
Thornwood
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1) That didn't apply in the 1970s (I know - I was there) and it isn't "Planning Permission".
2) If you have planning permission to develop a site you don't need to notify the local planning authority you're intending to demolish. (Nobody in their right mind would clear a site before getting planning permission to build something else as doing so legally extinguishes any use rights you may have to use the land and it immediately weakens any negotiating position you may have by having a building already on the site.)
By all means ask the local planning authority but I know the answer you'll get - assuming you can find anyone to give you an answer!
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Sorry, I didn't use the right terminology, Ray T, it is not my field.
Regards
Chas
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Sorry, I didn't intend for this query to get so many people hot under the collar, must be the weather.
Thanks again
Thornwood
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Sorry, I didn't use the right terminology, Ray T, it is not my field.
Regards
Chas
I'm not surprised. The trouble is that, every few months, the government has a bright idea and they move the goalposts. This inevitably has a knock on effect on everything else and makes things more complicated. You may remember when the Iron Lady came along and said she was going to get rid of all the red tape. At the time the Encyclopaedia of Planning Law (the lawyers bible - a series of books you see on judges bookshelves) was in two volumes. By the time they stopped publishing it and put it on line it had expanded to seven.
By way of example, the general permission most properties have to build walls and fences restricted their height where they would "abut" a highway. The meaning of the word "abut" was well established in law. It's meaning had been tested on appeal and ruled on by the high court. The politicians then came along with a range of new freedoms and restricted the height of fences which "adjoined" a highway. All the previous case law went out of the window as what might "abut" may not "adjoin" or vice versa. It was no use asking the local planning department as there was no established precedent until someone had taken the matter through the courts.
You need to be careful about terminology but in the 1970s you definitely didn't need any sort of permission from the planning authority to demolish an unlisted building or one outside a conservation area.
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Sorry, I didn't intend for this query to get so many people hot under the collar, must be the weather.
Thanks again
Thornwood
Don't worry about it. The trouble with "planning" is that everyone knows everything about it. I've often wondered why I bothered spending three years gaining a post-grad diploma in it. I'd have been better off going down to the pub and picking up the knowledge there.
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In the period in question Demolition work would have been controlled by Section 29 of the Public Health Act 1961. The Local Authority Building Control Section is the most likely to have any record of such work.
Failure to give notice under the provisions of S29 would have been subject to a fine of £5!
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This thread does neatly illustrate one of the hazards of using online portals to look things up - particularly legal things.
We have an extensive quote above, which is from a piece of secondary legislation dated 2015. Clearly this is not going to have been applicable in the 1970s.
The danger, however, is that in many complicated pieces of law (the tax code, for instance) amendments are often made to the wording of the old legislation; and the online portals want to give you the current version, so they amend it. Which is fine if you want to know what the law is now; but not if you need to know what it was then.
I used to have on my shelves the annual volumes "The Taxes Acts" for EVERY year since the 1960s, and if I wanted to know what the wording of a particular provision of the Taxes Management Act 1970 was in 1985, I would pull down the 1985 volume off my shelf, and there was the then current version. The e-publishers promised us the world, but they could never provide this facility in a form that I understood how to use.
It was very easy to use my paper volumes ...
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This thread does neatly illustrate the hazards of posting on any thread - for there will always be someone who doesn't add anything to the thread, but is more than willing to snipe at posts from the long grass.
Regards
Chas
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Well, I considered it to be "adding something" to draw attention to the different ways in which legislation may have been amended, and to the fact that electronic publications may not give you the version of the text that you are looking for but that this may not always be clear, for the benefit of those whose skills and experience lie in different fields than legal research.
If anybody else chooses to characterise this as "sniping from the long grass", then we will just have to agree to differ on that one.
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Back to the original query :)
Planning office would certainly be my first place to check (although they may or may not hold paperwork from 1970s).
Next I would try local library, archives, newspaper office(s)- if you are lucky they will have a filing system for old stories, historical society.
Good luck
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Thanks ' adhadowey', I think we better call it a day on this query. It seems that my original question has many answers. The demolition was not part of planning permission for something else. The land was leased and has reverted to a field where horses graze. Newspapers have drawn a blank and so have locals so will contact the planning office this week. Can't contact local history group for information as I am a member and this building is part of the research we are doing.
Again thanks for all the suggestions, far more than I ever expected.
Thornwood.