Demolition date

[Thornwood]

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

[Ray T]

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!

[Kiltpin]

Sorry, I didn't use the right terminology, Ray T, it is not my field.

Regards

Chas

[Thornwood]

Sorry, I didn't intend for this query to get so many people hot under the collar, must be the weather.
Thanks again
Thornwood

[Ray T]

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.

[Ray T]

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.

[radstockjeff]

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!

[jbml]

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 ...

[Kiltpin]

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