Pre-Application Advice
 
 
 

Pre-application advice is available to prospective developers from your local council. To help you assemble the likely information you might need for any meeting which would benefit both developer and officers in your local council, we have provided a checklist of the likely areas for discussion.

Depending upon the type of development proposed, the site identified for possible opportunities and issues, your Council has the expertise to advise you on what is likely to be needed to accompany any application to the authority for planning and associated consents. Such issues could be:

  • building regulations
  • contaminated land
  • noise
  • pollution and other environmental issues
  • flood risk and the need for assessment
  • archaeology
  • designing out crime
  • highway safety, traffic impact and parking requirements
  • listed and other historic buildings
  • layout and design
  • conservation issues
  • sustainability issues
  • landscape design and tree management
  • protection of habitats regulations
  • ecological surveys
  • development concept statements
  • site appraisals
  • environmental impact assessments
  • consultation with the local community
  • compliance with local plan policies
  • planning obligations

On any number of these issues you may be required to prepare supporting information to accompany an application. Without it your project could take longer to process. Your council will seek to add quality to any development proposed and advise you if your scheme is unlikely to receive consent to save you time and money.

Your Councils aim is to give advice and if necessary arrange meetings as soon as possible. For significant proposals that seek to provide regeneration schemes, leisure, large housing, commercial or industrial to provide wider community benefits your council should aim to provide a Development Team approach. Such service should give a single point of contact with all the different local authority services affecting the project. Initially this should be through the planning and regeneration team within the Council who will draw expertise from other services within the Council to give a co-ordinated response. This should save you time, effort and money.

You should contact your councils Development Control to obtain specific advice and information depending upon the nature of the development proposed. Whoever you contact will also be in a good position to suggest and advise if a wider Development Team meeting would help the project forward.