Crossing the red line; what's outside the title plan boundary?

The planning landscape is shifting at pace and for conveyancers, the risks are no longer confined to the red line on a title plan. That’s the warning from DevAssist founder Paul Addison and OnPoint Data co‑founder Jeremy Dorkins in the latest Today’s Conveyancer Podcast, where both argue that future development risk is now a core part of modern due diligence.

Addison launched DevAssist to tackle what lies outside the red line. As he puts it, “there’s a 46% chance… something could be happening just outside those boundaries”, something capable of affecting views, amenity or value. With the government’s accelerated push for housing, those odds are only rising.

The National Planning Policy Framework has been “injected with steroids” with the re‑introduced five‑year housing supply requirement triggering a surge in opportunistic applications. Councils unable to demonstrate supply face the tilted balance, where “benefit outweighs harm” and large schemes on greenfield land become difficult to resist.

Yet most buyers remain unaware of the deeper planning pipeline and you know just who they are going to blame when they find out their view is about to be blighted. Bird & Bird made it “abundantly clear” that solicitors must report on planning data or searches says Addison. "If something untoward does happen… the first point of call will be the conveyancing solicitor" adds Dorkins. 

The podcast is a must listen for conveyancers who don't know their greybelt from their SHELAA.

The Today's Conveyancer podcast can be found on your preferred podcast provider and also at www.todaysconveyancer.co.uk. Subscribe and listen in for all the latest conveyancing industry news and views. 

Thank you to our podcast sponsors LEAP Legal Software and InfoTrack

Transcript

SPEAKER_00 0:09

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SPEAKER_01 0:22

Hello, welcome along to the latest Today's Conveyance podcast. Today we're talking about development, planning, building, new homes, 1.5 million housing targets, all that sort of business. And it's uh great to have uh two experts on the discussion with me to get into the meat of this. Paul Addison, founder of DevAssist, and Jeremy Dawkins, co-founder of On Point Data. Great to have you both on the podcast, chaps. I think we've had you both on on before at some point in the past as well.

SPEAKER_02 0:56

Delighted to join you, though.

SPEAKER_01 0:57

I think you're pretty well established in the conveyancing community. I don't suppose there are that many people that haven't come across uh you in the various guises that you've you've had over the years. But uh for the uninitiated, Paul, tell us uh a little bit about yourself and DevASyst. And uh and I know you've I mean you've got a particularly interesting background in uh development yourself as well, haven't you?

SPEAKER_03 1:19

Yeah, I started off my career in land acquisition. So I was one of the pest sort of predators out there that would hoover up land, whether it be greenfield, urban, previously contaminated, whatever, land and you know, immediate land and strategic land. So it was my job to identify development opportunities and take them through the planning system, go through the risk elimination process and hand them over to construction. So that's what I've done for decades, and that's why I created DevASIS, which was because every time I submitted a planning application, the local natives would just go so super hostile, and they hated the change, concreting over the countryside, you know, the usual campaign for the protection of rural England. And it occurred to me that the British public just does not understand planning, does not understand the level of information that is actually out there if you know where to look. So we created a business which is a consumer protection product. So if you like, I've gone from bad guy to good guy, and we do detailed investigations that report to people what could be happening in the location that they desire to buy in. And it and it's a it's a very re revealing service. Very, very proud of what we've created, and we're we've been doing it now for 14 years, so we've got a lot of data.

SPEAKER_01 2:56

Fab, uh we're gonna come on to quite a bit of that over the course of the discussion, no doubt. Jeremy, uh again, if you wouldn't mind sharing a bit about your background and um what on-point data is all about.

SPEAKER_02 3:10

Well, I I came into the industry back in 2001 when I first acquired a property search group, PSG franchise. And then over the years I subsequently owned five of the PSG franchises, becoming one of the largest in the UK. And then after that, after uh being acquired, went into the corporate sector for a number of years and then pulled out of the corporate sector just over three years ago to co-found with uh my co-director Kevin Johnson on point data. And the main reason we sit there is because we could see the direction of travel and we wanted to bring back a more personal level of service and a more of a partnership type of arrangements with conveyancing solicitors along with specialist teams for both the real estate and the agricultural property market.

SPEAKER_01 3:56

I guess the starting point uh for me is around why this understanding of planning data is important. And and Paul, I mean, you really talk about the fact that it has real life implications for people that are moving home. Our podcast from memory was all about you can't buy a view, but people are very connected to their property, they want to know whether Tesco is going to build their latest superstore next door or whether that lovely view that's out the back window is going to get spoiled by development at some point in the future. How does that work when it comes to the relationship with conveyances? Then how do you make sure that conveyances are informed enough to enable them to share that information with home movers?

SPEAKER_03 4:41

Firstly, we we write the reports for the end user, we don't write them for the solicitor. That's I think very important, just as a purchaser of a property would go off and employ a structural surveyor to make sure that there's integrity in the structure that they're looking to buy and invest in. We look at that location, and it's the corniest phrase in property, location, location, location. It is the principal contributing factor to the value of a property, and yet solicitors just look inside the red line of what their clients are looking to buy. And there's a very, very significant chance, a 46% chance to be exact, that there could be something happening just outside those boundaries or close enough to impact a view, create disruption. And that's what we look for. And it's say it's it's we have a staggeringly high statistic. So we're here to enhance the service levels that solicitors offer. They these days I have great sympathy with solicitors because they have to be experts in environmental law. They now have to be experts in climate change. They've they've got all of these boxes now to tick and eliminate risk and report back to the client. So we're just trying to take that stress away from them, enhance their service levels, and give the purchaser perhaps reasons to renegotiate. Just as you would on a structural survey if you find the roof needs replacing, you go and chip the price 20, 30 grand. And, you know, that's what we give people that opportunity to do, or we give them the comfort they want to go ahead with that purchase by telling them that you know it's got a clean bill of health, and it's very unlikely that they will experience significant change. But we have got uh a very, very pro-development culture that's come out of uh the the Labour government since they've gained power, and and it it's just changed the planning system to a level that I have never experienced in my whole career.

SPEAKER_01 7:00

A couple of points wanted to pick up there. First is to play devil's advocate, and you allude to it yourself there, Paul, about the fact that conveyancers now have to be experts in environmental science or climate change, whatever it might be, flooding. The conveyancers' job is to ensure that what's in that box is protected, is right, is fair, is is is you know good and and transactable land title. Why should this be something that falls under their scope and remit?

SPEAKER_03 7:29

Technology has moved massively, you know, since the turn of the millennium. The level of information that we can now get access to is is huge. You couldn't do this 26 odd years ago. It would have been too painstakingly difficult to drive to every council and look at all of their local plans. Everything we can now do is desktop based, it's online. And solicitors do have to be look at this because you know we've we've currently got live litigation cases where litigation lawyers have come to us to do retrospective reports on properties that their clients have bought where they're feeling very let down by their conveyancer because something was not revealed to them in the conveyancing process. And I think there's a an expectation from the general public of what their solicitor does, and then there's the reality, and and they're two completely different things. When we did market research before we set the business up, a lot of the responses we were getting from the public was doesn't my solicitor do that? And we I've still had it today, uh recently, with solicitors who think that the local authority search will reveal everything that we reveal. And of course, it just doesn't. So it's if if you want cheap bucket shop conveyances, there's plenty out there who will do it for a few hundred quid, and you will get the service level you deserve. But for those solicitors that do advertise themselves in a level where service is is everything, very much like you know Jeremy's offering. It's not just uh you know a computer system that does everything for them, it's a real person doing real work. And and they're the type of clients that that you know you use us. So if if they're concerned about their PI and being pursued, then for their sake, as much as their clients, then they should look for a fuller and more complete service offering that they're bringing to their clients.

SPEAKER_01 9:42

I mean, how incumbent, Jeremy, is it on people like yourselves who resell devassys reports to ensure that your clients kind of understand what the breadth of offering is now from the searches side of things. I mean, you know, Paul makes a point about going back 20, 30 years, this wasn't possible, but I mean the the the amount of data that's there now is is is huge. How how do you keep up and therefore how do conveyances keep up?

SPEAKER_02 10:08

It's a very good question. I mean, we we work very closely with Paul and his team, and we will provide things like lunch and learn sessions for law firms so that they have a complete understanding of what the information and data is available to them. I think what Paul touched on is really important that there is one level of conveyancing, which is just getting it across the line. There's the second level of conveyancing, which actually looks at what might impact on a purchaser's enjoyment of their property later on. And I think this has got important considerations because so many individuals making a purchase of a property is such an emotive type of issue, and they're so excited about making that purchase, and it's can be hundreds and hundreds of thousands of pounds, and they're so focused on the property, they're not immediately focused on what may happen around the property after completion. But what you can say, rest assured, if something untoward does happen after completion, the first point of call they will be going back to will be the conveyancing solicitor who undertook it in the first place. And the question will be was there a report that could have told me about this? And if there was, why wasn't I made aware of that report? So, for our point of view, what we're always trying to make sure the conveyancers are aware of is one, what this information is available to them, and making sure for their own PI sake that they are at least making their client aware that this data is available for them. And it is about education. Um, and we always find that the vast majority of people we speak to in law firms really aren't necessarily aware of the type of planning policies that I know Paul will surely touch on, the Sheila's and the Schlaars. Um, and I think people sometimes are horrified that they suddenly find that that rural view that's been so beautifully described by the estate agent, you know, rolling countryside that you've got this view of, it's not a given right, and that there could be one of the large house developers putting 4,000 homes on there. It may not be happening today or tomorrow, but that land is the earmark for it, and as when the time is right, it could certainly happen. So, for our point about view, it's about educating the law firms that we work with.

SPEAKER_01 12:21

This government has obviously got a real kind of drive to build 1.5 million homes, goodness knows whether we'll actually get anywhere near that. But in order to achieve that, you're shaking your head vociferously. But you know, in order to achieve that, there have been uh major changes to the planning system, haven't there? Yeah. I mean, just again, for the benefit of listeners and for conveyances, what do they actually need to know about what those changes are and how they're going to impact future transactions?

SPEAKER_03 12:54

The key document that it always comes back to is the national planning policy framework. David Cameron brought this in back in 2012. And if I was to summarize its purpose, its purpose was to facilitate and give local communities the chance to participate in the debate on where housing, economic land, land for gypsies and travellers, and land for housing was where it would go. So it gave them that opportunity. Unfortunately, a lot of communities didn't engage with it because they don't understand it. And where a local plan is considered out of date, and where there is not an active neighborhood plan, then local government will say, Well, if you didn't participate, we'll tell you where it's going. And so there's again, it's back to this lack of understanding. And what Labor did was that they took the document, National Planning Policy Framework, effectively injected it with steroids, and removed loads of roadblocks that were stopping development getting obtained. One of the key ones was the reintroduction of the five-year supply. That meant that all councils have to audit what they have to provide, and then they have to show central government that they have a five-year supply. If they don't have a five-year supply, there's a term it's referred to as the tilted balance, where it's benefit versus harm. If a council doesn't have a five-year supply, nasty developer, as I used to be, come along, put in an application for a thousand homes on virgin greenfield land. The council will have to say the benefit outweighs the harm. We don't have a five-year supply, therefore, it should go to an immediate approval without delay. And there are just so many case studies on this because a lot of councils don't have a five-year supply. Labor made it even worse by increasing their targets. So where they were failing, they're now really failing because they are so underwater. And developers will predate on this. They will go to councils that don't have a five-year supply and will promote and argue the tilted balance, benefit versus harm. So we are seeing a huge amount of planning permissions being granted. What we're not seeing, and this is where I feel Labour have failed to see the bigger issue here, which is the economy's got to come first. You can get the planning permissions, but if you don't give a good, robust economy to developers to sell their products into, then they're not going to start building. It's a business, you know, just like the corner shop wouldn't put 30 cans of baked beans on the on the shelf if they can only sell two. It's the same for house builders. They will their build rate will equal their sales rate. And the sales rate at the moment is poor. So that's why we're not seeing the site starts. But what it does mean is that there's this huge amount of land out there sitting with planning permissions that are already in the system that are not being reported to Mr. and Mrs. Average when they're buying their property. And they don't know where to look. The solicitor, I would expect, won't know where to look. And this is where, you know, again, it does come back to us. I don't want to plug the business, I want to sort of you know educate the problem. But we are seeing, uh say, a huge amount. And then we've also got the grey belt, which Labor also brought in, which was uh argued well, it was portrayed by the media that it was going to be dirty greenbelt land previously, you know, tarmac, might have had garages on it, etc. It wasn't contributing to the value of the greenbelt. The reality of the decisions we're seeing are virgin greenbelt fields that are now being approved because one case we came across recently, it was argued that the nearby settlement was a village and not a town, and therefore it qualified as Greybelt. I can't square the circle on that, but that's the push that we are seeing from central government. So we as we say I've never seen as many greenfields being permitted, and and equally in the urban area, the push and the presumption is in favour of development. The developer starts with a process that says, yes, you can have this, and then the application audit process has to look for a good reason, a very good reason why it should be refused. So Labour, they won't hit their one and a half million, but bless them for trying. They are making a difference for the in in the planning system, at least.

SPEAKER_02 18:04

Just to add to that, David, I was just going to say one of the things that we've seen is the the planning is one thing. One of the things they failed to look at is the infrastructure and the investment in the infrastructure. So it's great to having a site, a grey belt or green belt that they're going to develop, but actually a lot of the local councils have seriously criticized the fact that they haven't actually put any investment into the GP surgeries, schools, water infrastructure, and things like that. And actually, all of those things are what causes local people to so much, you know, have so much resentment against some of these sites that have been propped up because there's been no real thought put into them in the first place.

SPEAKER_03 18:43

It's very true, Jeremy. Uh, where I would always come to the defense of the developer is why is it their problem? You know, developers already have to provide under the 106 agreements a large provision of affordable housing. They don't make money from that. That that is an indirect form of taxation on land. You don't go to Morrison's and find there is 30% of the aisles are set aside for people on low income, and Morrisons must subsidize that. You don't go to the petrol station and find search and petrol pumps where 30% are for people on low income. But the house building sector is. It is not their job to provide doctor surgeries and improve road. That's central government and local government's job. Their failure to do that, you know, or the criticism should be directed at them, not the developers who are just trying to build the the and build the requirement of homes, which we do desperately need. It's a bitter pill to swallow, but we do need them.

SPEAKER_01 19:52

How much is that a result of this statistic that two-thirds of councils don't have an up-to-date local plan? So to your point about the five-year plan, Paul, if there's no five-year plan, then the schools, the hospitals, the GP surgeries, doctors, dentists, they're they're not going to be planned because there's no forward plan.

SPEAKER_03 20:17

No. Well, if if they don't have an up-to-date local plan and they don't have a five-year housing plan, then the national planning policy framework takes precedent and will effectively make all of their local policies out of date. And therefore, the presumption will be in favor of development. So it is incumbent. Councils are general view. There are some excellent individuals working in councils. There's also some orphan ones, and they have had plenty of time to get their local plans up to date. And they just don't do it. So it's it's their fault. That's that's what when we vote in our councillors, and people don't look deep enough to see where the fault actually lies. I appreciate their tight on money and everything else, but it is incumbent, it is the council's fault. If they don't have that up-to-date local plan, then developers will come along and predate on that area.

SPEAKER_01 21:23

Jeremy, there are already planning reports available, aren't they? Some of the other uh providers have planning reports. I mean, how popular are they from uh you know your businesses' point of view?

SPEAKER_02 21:37

So the vast majority of conveyancing listeners will get uh an environmental report, which will obviously tell them about contaminated land and things like that and climate. The vast majority of these reports now include raw planning data information, but it is raw planning information saying about what's happening and what's recorded. What it's not doing, it's like A set of accounts, it's looking at a statement in time at that moment in time. What it's not doing is looking into the future. Where DevAcess stands out from the crowd is it is truly the only reports on the market that look into the future about what could impact on your enjoyment. Um, a planning report will not be to mentioning about planning applications that you know haven't gone through, areas of land that have been allocated for potential housing. And these are the things that have a really major impact on people's enjoyments of their properties. So realistically, there is nothing else out there that you can get to give you any form of insight on what may happen to the around your property in the next five to ten years. And obviously things change, it's a moving thing, but at least you can go in a pre-armed with a good understanding. I mean, you might look at a property and think that the people opposite you have got, you could see there's a potential for an infill on their property. What you might not realize is you thought it might be one house going in there, it could be a block of 42 apartments going in, which yet again will increase the number of traffic going up and down outside your road. More importantly, is where you have areas where the whole area is going to be allocated for housing. Recently, um, I know somebody that looked at a beautiful house and uh timber all done beautifully, a little very small select estate looking out into a rural outlook. However, that land, which they all had the view of, has been allocated for a major housing development. Now it's not happening at the moment, and that goes predominantly down to what Paul mentioned, which is the economy, and a lot of house builders just can't get a return on investment at this moment in time, but it will happen at some stage. So those people who've bought those properties today thinking that they, you know, this is a view that is given for the rest of their ownership, it's unlikely it's going to be that way. And will that, when that view disappears, will that devalue the property in the future? Will it reduce the number of people who find that property quite so attractive?

SPEAKER_01 24:01

But again, to what extent is this the conveyances responsibility, Jeremy? You know, I I and I and I put my conveyances hat on here very deliberately because I you sort of sit there and think to myself, how much can they be held responsible for this? And Paul, you I know you've got some live litigation cases, but to you first, Jeremy, on that one.

SPEAKER_02 24:20

So so I mean it's a good question. Should solicitor's role include highlighting the risks that affect you know the future enjoyment of a value of a property, even if those risks aren't immediately apparent today. I mean, arguably, I think what you'll find is it's their reputation as well. So if you've got a uh a client, that client naturally believes that the solicitor does this automatically. They think this is happening automatically anyway, even if it's not happening. So what I would say is if there is something that goes wrong in the future, you can guarantee the first person's door they're going to be knocking on will be the solicitor because of the solicitor's PI. I know Paul's had evidence of where he's actually seen letters that have actually been sent to lawyers saying, you didn't advise me of this, where do we go from here? Now that isn't a question of saying, you know, what do you think is happening? That's actually saying, you know, we're thinking of putting in a claim against you. So, you know, I think that as Paul mentioned earlier, you know, solicitors nowadays, they are, as of 1st of May, they're now financial advisors, they're climate consultants, environmental specialists, as well as being lawyers as well. There's an awful lot for them to do. I just think that if the information is currently available, and this sort of information wasn't previously available, it is available now, just making sure your clients are aware of it, it can't do anything bad for your reputation and your profession and professionalism and how you looked after that particular client.

SPEAKER_03 25:51

Just to add another point on that, the the the reports that that and you know, excellent reports, the the landmark, groundshore, whoever it may be that they provide, the these reports that have parts on environmentals, parts perhaps on subsidence, and then it has the planning data. As Jeremy rightly pointed out, it's just raw planning data. The case of Burden Byrd, who were successfully sued, in the appeal decision, Lady Justice Gloucester, made it abundantly clear it is the responsibility of the solicitor to report on planning data or any search. It is their responsibility. So if solicitors don't at the very least offer the vast array of reports that are available to their customer, then that they're exposing themselves. They've created an audit trail that says you didn't offer this. Now I'm upset, I'm going to sue you. So at least get it in there to say we recommended we get this type of report for you. If the client declines it, well, on their head be it. But at least they've got that clean, clean trail. And we've just joined the Professional Negligence Lawyers Association, and it was a really interesting chat with them, where there are even more cases than we thought existed where lawyers are being sued over the level of searches that were offered to their clients. So it is happening. They may get settled, but the damage is already done, as Jeremy alluded to. You know, the the impact of having one upset customer is huge because that one upset customer probably tells 20 people down the pub and it spreads like wildfire. So it is so important for solicitors to get their client care in order and their offering in order.

SPEAKER_01 27:50

And I mean that you know, I appreciate you're probably not going to be able to share a lot of detail about some of the cases that you um you see, Paul, but you what kind of things are people coming back at firms with?

SPEAKER_03 28:03

I think one of the key ones that we we come across time and time again, and I'm going to try and explain this really simply. Every council has to have that five-year supply, as we talked about earlier. The way they find that supply is by looking at all of their unbuilt planning permissions, all of their allocated sites, and 99% of the time, that's not enough to hit the target requirement. So they create a call for sites. It's a big consultation where any landowner is invited to throw their hat in the ring and say, I'd be very happy for my land to become a site for employment, or it could be a housing site, or it could be a site for gypsy travellers. It tends to be those three subjects. The land then goes into what is nicknamed the Sheila, Sheila's and Schlaas. The Sheila and the Schla, they're pretty much the same thing. The strategic housing and economic land availability assessment. All of that land is then assessed for its potential. If the council feels it's suitable, it will then go into their supply of this is land that we feel will hit our target in the next five years, 10 years, or 15 years. Now, what's really interesting about Sheila's is there's no public consultation. So if I could pretend, David, let's say you're you've just fallen in love with that beautiful little cottage overlooking 12 donkeys in the field. And that's why you're buying it. Very emotive, as Jeremy said. You could ask the existing owner, are you aware of any planning applications in the area? And they would genuinely say, no, no, no, that's where they keep the donkeys, you know, they've kept them there for decades. Unless you go looking at the Sheila, you won't find it. So, because that landowner, that property owner, was not consulted. You have to know where to look for these documents, and that's a key part. And to again expand on a brilliant point that Jeremy made, the planning data is only one part of a very big subject. And uh Jeremy's heard this so many times, it's very boring. But my favorite analogy is if you're gonna go and see the doctor and you want a full health check, how would you feel if the doctor said, I'm just gonna take your temperature? That's all I'm gonna do. That's planning data. You know the doctor has got to take your bloods, got to listen to your heart, do an ECG, MRI scans, look down your throat, look in your eyes, you know, all of the above. That's the difference between raw planning data and what we do. We look at the Sheilas, we look at the local plan, we look at emerging policy that's coming out of central government. Um, and then there's lots we could talk about that, of sort of automatic permissions being granted where they're very close to railway stations. It's almost permitted development rights being sort of again put on steroids. So that's why you can't, if if the solicitor just even if they do go through that planning data, they then create that PI risk to themselves. And furthermore, they're not giving the clients the full picture because there is so much more to look at, and and that that is what is so unique about what we do, is it is just it it's more akin to do having a full structural survey on a location than it is the standard searches. So I hate it when people call us a search. We are a real in-depth investigation, and you know, you you you get what you pay for.

SPEAKER_01 31:43

How quickly are these situations changing, Paul? I mean, if if transactions are taking six, nine months, for example, is that enough time for the sorts of planning and development changes that you're talking about to have happened?

SPEAKER_03 32:01

Yes, I mean it's it's happening. It happened since day one when when Labor got into power. And it won't change even if they lose power. You know, I've seen this my whole career, where all governments are on the accelerator. They all want to provide more housing, they just do have done it in different ways. John Prescott introduced PPG3, that changed everything. David Cameron playing politics, and now we've had Angela Rayner before her stamp duty faux pas, and you know, she has made a massive difference. So it's all I've seen is it it sort of swings in favour of the developer, and it has done that progressively over the what's now nearly four decades that that I've been involved in in development. So it's but there are to sort of fully cover the point and question, there is documents that if you know where to look, it will tell you what's coming in the future. And once you've got all of that information, just like the doctor who's got your blood test and has got your your heart results, they can then give a proper diagnosis of what is the current state of your body. And that's what we do. We look at that location and we can then predict, you know, I know, and my team knows, what developers look for in land. We know what road shapes they like, they know I know where the access points that they will find because they are they have to conform with certain design guides. So we know where to look for those little clues that tell us that there is a site nearby. It may not have any planning history, but it's got all the indicators that say it will become one in the future. So it is able to future proof so people can buy with an element of crystal ball gazing of knowing what's going to happen in the future.

SPEAKER_02 33:55

Yes, I think it's also worth pointing out that some very astute landowners or property owners will acquire the report to see whether their own property has actually got a development opportunity on it as well. Because it could be it could well, it could well be that there it's a parent's property, parents are elderly, but it's got a large amount of land associated with it. And it's a very simple way to find out whether actually that property, you know, rather than putting it on the market at X number of thousands, it can go on the market with a you know an outline planning application on it for considerably more, all sold off differently. So there's a variety of ways the data can be looked at. I know for a personal point of view, over the years, you know, I've been very fortunate with properties that I've purchased that I've not actually had any massive impact of anything close to me. But knowing what I do today on my next property purchase, I can guarantee that I wouldn't be making that purchase without being armed with the best information that's available about what might impact, not just on my enjoyment, but actually on the potential value of that property. Because, as Paul said, it could well be that a development's been scheduled to go there that could actually significantly devalue your assets. So going in forearmed is forewarned.

SPEAKER_03 35:13

The type of land that we're also seeing considered for development. We I know we've touched on you know, fields with donkeys in and stuff. That makes it out that that's just what we're looking for. It's not, it could be the corner plot where somebody thinks, oh, I might have one house, but there are policies now that make best use of land. So you could actually, and I've seen it, planning refusals because they're not providing enough houses or enough flats because you well, you don't build one. Why don't you build six there? Or what we've also seen are areas of uh of parks, public open space. They are now in Sheila's because those councils are so desperate for their housing numbers, they're having to look at open spaces, and it could be the football field, it could be the local park that's you know got a fully equipped play area, and these we find time and time again where even they are included in the Sheila's as part of that housing supply. So we we find them, we we've got a great one down in Kent. We found a beach with an unimplemented extant planning permission for a thousand flats, and it was literally a beach, as you would imagine it. And the purchaser was so, you know, that they thought they were buying a C view. So we find them in the weirdest possible locations. You can never ever assume that an area is safe.

SPEAKER_02 36:42

I'm sure you hope won't mind me mentioning, Paul. One of the ones that's been very topical recently in the news has to be those poor people who own those houses where Amazon have decided to put the most enormous warehouse up directly behind their properties. And without a shadow of a doubt, that is going to have a major, major impact on those properties.

SPEAKER_03 37:02

Yeah.

SPEAKER_02 37:02

That information was actually available. It's all there, it was crystal clear.

SPEAKER_03 37:08

We we actually have been invited to partake in with some residents there. Uh, and uh it's so obvious when they purchased their property, that land was identified for employment land. So they shouldn't have been surprised when Amazon came along and built this ugly uh warehouse. It was already going to be there. Why were they not told? We know why, because they were doing probably the bare minimum and not looking outside the red line of what their clients were buying. The information was was there, it was never a secret.

SPEAKER_02 37:45

Unfortunately, it is always the solicitor's PI that people hit first.

SPEAKER_01 37:50

Yeah. Yeah. It's been an interesting discussion and and really, really challenging, Paul, for you to uh explain development to, I guess really to lay people. Because, you know, as we said, conveyances aren't uh planning officers, they're not expected to know this stuff, and and it it's an incredibly complicated and complex area. I guess I just wanted to finish as we move towards the end of the discussion on your thoughts around whether there are types of properties, locations, scenarios in which a conveyancer should be looking at a transaction and saying, Do you know what this has got risk written all over it from a development point of view? Or or whether, you know, to use a kind of a clumsy comparison with stamp duty, you know, it could happen on any property.

SPEAKER_03 38:44

It could happen on any property.

SPEAKER_01 38:46

Like Turkey's voting for Christmas.

SPEAKER_03 38:48

Yeah, it could be, and we we again had to do some work for a litigation lawyer, neighbors, uh purchasers bought three-bed semi, and then we're pretty miffed to find out that there was already planning permission for a two-story extension. We did a retrospective report, we would have revealed it. The information, the data was there. So we would have been able to educate them at the point of purchase. Well, there's going to be a two-story extension next door that might create shadowing or loss of light over your patio. So there's one, it could be the park. Certainly where you're on the edge of a settlement, where you're in that transition period, you know, that is where we you will often see settlement expansion, is obviously on the edge of the settlement, but you also get them in very remote areas. So it it you can never assume we find risks in the weirdest of places. We found rivers that are being reclaimed into the land, so where people thought they had a view directly over the river, the developers come back and in a very Dutch style, sort of reclaimed it and built more flats in front of the flats that they had previously sold with river views. So you can never, ever, ever assume you're safe. Certainly, parts of you know, where we look for property modifications, we have to draw the line. We always look at abutting properties for is there any plans for an extension that could affect what the clients are buying. But we won't be telling telling them that they're building a conservatory 50 meters away because that's just irrelevant. We we look for what the buyers want to know. And it could be, if it's in central London, it could be the neighbours who share a party wall with you are looking to build a three-story basement underneath. It could be, which we also see in all the cities of uh and major towns, vertical extensions where with lightweight structures, we're now seeing three, four, five stories. There's there's one in London where they added an additional 15 stories on top of a 30-story tower. And you can do this now with with modern methods of building. So you can never assume it it's very, very dangerous to think, oh, this one looks safe, because I bet you that's the one that will catch you out.

SPEAKER_01 41:13

In many respects, I didn't expect uh a different answer, but I mean interesting nonetheless, and really appreciate both of your input into the podcast today. So thank you very much indeed to Paul and to Jeremy.

SPEAKER_02 41:26

Thank you. Thank you very much, David.

SPEAKER_01 41:29

The Today's Conveyancer podcast is available on your preferred podcast provider. It's also available on today'sconveyancer.co.uk. My thanks to Paul. Thank you to Jeremy. Thank you for listening, and we'll see you again soon.