In conversation with Architect, Ruth Reed

For the next episode of the Frame Technologies podcast, we’ve decided to tackle one of the industry's biggest concerns: planning permission. 

We're joined by architect, Ruth Reed, Director at Green Planning Studio and the first female president of RIBA joined us.

Ruth has worked closely as a building partner with Frame Technologies for many years, providing additional support to Frame Technologies’ clients as a planning consultant and as a self-build architect. 

She brings a well-rounded understanding of the self-build experience, as she is a proud self-builder, too. Frame Technologies MD, Simon Orrells worked with Ruth to build her first self-build home before working with her again last year to complete her second self-build home, Robins Yard.

Transcript

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SPEAKER_00 0:01

Hello and welcome to the second episode of the Frame Technologies Podcast. This episode is all about planning permission, and we'll be addressing some of the issues that self-builders in England and Wales are facing during their application process for planning permission. On paper, getting planning permission seems straightforward, but we know for lots of self-builders, this really couldn't be further from the truth. Local planning authorities have been running at reduced capacities because of COVID-19. And the slow return to full capacity means that local planning authorities are just not able to meet their case time for me. We've heard stories of some people waiting 18 months for an outcome. If you're in this position, you're not alone, and we hope this podcast will help you understand some of the issues going on and what you can do to overcome them. Frame Technologies prides themselves on giving their followers and their clients the most up-to-date information that they can find from the self-building industry. So when it came to this issue, we felt like the best person to talk to was Ruth Reed. Ruth Reid, who was previously first female president of the Royal Institute of British Architects, is now working as a director in Green Planning Studio. Green Planning Studio is a planning-led consultancy that specialises in gaining planning permission in areas of development constraint. They have extensive in-house experience in planning, architecture, and the built environment. They have particular skills and success areas in planning constraint, such as the Green Belt, AONBs, and the historic environment. They have a surpassed record in obtaining planning permission, particularly at Appeal, and they have considerable success in winning costs for their clients. So Ruth is here with us on the line today. Ruth, it's great to have you with us. Hello, it's good to be here. So, Ruth, thank you for joining us. Like I said, this discussion is all going to be about planning permission and the issues that you're seeing your clients face, and hopefully, we can get our listeners some great brand new up-to-date information that's going to help them with their self-build journey. Before we go further, as I mentioned, you've had an illustrious career in architecture, in planning. I'd like for you to tell us a little bit more about what that was like. So, how did you find yourself president of the Royal Institute of British Architects and what have you done since then?

SPEAKER_01 2:08

I've been an architect for far longer than I'm ever going to tell anybody. But uh my career has been very interesting uh in terms of what I've built and what uh I have overseen and what I've done around architecture. I've always worked in housing, starting off with a national house builder, going to a housing association, and then setting up on my own. During that period, I had an awful problem with the foot and mouth disease, and we had real issues in getting any work in, and I applied to become a planning inspector, uh, determining appeals by householders largely when they couldn't get planning permission. I did that for a couple of years, um, but it gave me the background in planning that makes me slightly different from most other architects. After a while, I left practice and went to teach at the Birmingham School of Architecture, and I was teaching studio, teaching design, but most of all I was teaching professional practice and ultimately they made me a professor, which was very good. During the time of my teaching, I became, I was voted the first woman president of the Royal Institute of British Architects. It didn't happen in isolation. I'd started off at branch level and I'd been the president of the Royal Society of Architects in Wales and sat on numerous committees, but I actually broke a glass ceiling and became the first woman president. An extraordinary experience seeing the world and the breadth of architecture. But eventually coming back down to earth and back to my students, where the call of private practice took me, and I went off to join my brother at Green Planning Studio. He's a planning consultant, and I said, Well, this is fine, but can I do some architecture? And that's what we have done together since 2013.

SPEAKER_00 3:52

And what about Green Planning Studio? What does your business offer self-builders?

SPEAKER_01 3:57

Green Planning Studio is a planning-led consultancy that requires quite a lot of architecture. When clients come to us with a planning problem, they frequently need a design. And we are seeing more and more self-builders going back to my days of being in practice on my own when I did a lot of self-build work, people who want exceptional homes in the countryside, barn conversions, tricky schemes within towns and cities. So that's the side that I have led on since I joined in 2013. And we have uh developed it to provide a complete solution for uh self-builders, including, if you needed it, contaminated land surveys. Um, we have contacts with people that deal with highways and noise, trees, ecology, so that we can point everybody in the right direction to put everything together for their planning application.

SPEAKER_00 4:53

And let's say I was a brand new client, what does onboarding with you look like? What would be your first actions if I was a new client?

SPEAKER_01 5:00

The first point of entry to any work that we do for a client is a full-site appraisal. So we don't only look at where the trees and uh flooding potentially or the what the roads are like, but we also look into the planning history because it within that can be a lot of opportunities for increasing the opportunity for the size of the house or the location of the house. Once we've appraised the site and determined that in principle planning is possible, uh, we will then uh work with the client to develop the design, put together the planning application, drawing out the case. And we can go so far as to do the building regulations, we can do a full set of uh construction drawings if needed, and we can do contract supervision and certification, but only if the site's within an hour of the office. We cover all of England and Wales for our planning work because it doesn't require us to go to site every week. For architecture, we limit it to within an hour of our offices or our homes. Some of us, our senior architect lives in Cheshire, so slightly different boundaries for him.

SPEAKER_00 6:09

So you must have some brilliant stories. You must also have some great builds, some memorable projects that you've worked on.

SPEAKER_01 6:16

Um, I think the key thing about self-build, it's about people. I mean, I love architecture and I design for fun, but the best thing about it is that you are dealing with people, and if they're happy clients, then it's a memorable project. So I can point to a number of them where it's actually the people I want to talk about more than their house. I could write it should never happen to an architect. I have had uh births, marriages during the process of getting self-builds together. All of human life is there. Sometimes the relationship you have with your client extends beyond the uh process of getting the house built, and you get some friends. So that's really good. I have had some amazing sites. I did a lot of barn conversions when I had my first practice. We've started doing a lot again now for reasons I'll come on to, but it's really, I think it's it's the people. Oh, and that and the two houses I've built for myself, of course. They were wonderful.

SPEAKER_00 7:15

Yes, your two houses. We'll be talking about your second self-build Robin's yard later on in the episode, and we're very excited to hear how you're finding life in your new home. So I mentioned earlier in the podcast that frame technologies, you know, they're well aware that there are a lot of issues going on in England and Wales regarding the planning permission process. I said that these issues started as a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. I was wondering if you could just outline what's happening now and what are the new issues that they're facing.

SPEAKER_01 7:44

Even leading up to 2020, there were issues with the system. Under austerity, there were massive cuts to local authorities and we were experiencing huge delays in processing applications. Because the remit of Green Planning Studio is to take on the tricky, the difficult. If you've got a case officer under pressure, they're the cases they're least likely to get to. So we were experiencing delay anyway. It got considerably worse with the effects of COVID. Also concurrent with an increase in the amount of information we're being asked for to support applications. There's biodiversity net gain, uh, which is requiring additional ecology reports and uh design elements like wood piles and things that people quite like to provide in their schemes, but uh it's the bureaucracy of providing the reports that require them. So added to the delay and the delay that's brought about by needing additional requirements, it has been a very difficult environment for getting planning uh permission for anybody, but particularly for the people going for the exceptional design or the exceptional site. One of the other things, or a couple of the other things, in local authority, they are now outsourcing a lot of design decision making. It can be quite difficult to talk to the person writing the report to get any kind of dialogue during the process of making an application. And um, though we will sometimes recommend using the pre-application advice service, some local authorities are so busy they can't even offer it. So it's not an easy environment for getting planning permission at the moment.

SPEAKER_00 9:30

So, what are the real reasons for these delays? You know, in your role at Green Planning Studio, you must be finding this frustrating.

SPEAKER_01 9:38

I mean, the reason for the delays are are understandable. I, you know, the planning departments are not our enemy, but they, you know, they have real problems and they have a lot of my sympathy. Because of the severe lack of resources and money, they're understaffed. They used underqualified staff and they've developed huge backlogs of cases. So, I mean, there is a reason why it doesn't work, but at the same time, for the individual person trying to get planning permission for their dream home, it's incredibly frustrating.

SPEAKER_00 10:08

So, with a dreaded question about wait times, as I said earlier, we have heard of self-builders waiting around 18 months. Are you seeing similar things? Are your clients affected in the same way?

SPEAKER_01 10:21

I mean, the kind of wait times that we've been looking at, you can get a consent probably within six months of the application being validated by the local authority. Some seem to use validation as a way of managing the workload and will take a long time to even validate it and uh provide a case officer. Then it might be six months, I say, before a decision comes out. But some cases they have run for years and years. If you go for an exceptional home in the countryside under paragraph 80 of the National Planning Policy Framework, you will have to go through a rigorous process of design review and many iterations before the application goes in. They'll often take a very long time to determine it, and then it will 60% of the time it will go to appeal. We have a client who went for over six years and finally concluded she was never going to get permission for a paragraph 80 on that site, and she'd spent over £100,000 in fees. And we did our very best, but you are entirely at the very end of the day, you're entirely waiting on the personal opinion of a planning inspector who, in this instance, decided he didn't like it.

SPEAKER_00 11:33

And how are these delays affecting your work with your clients? Have you had to change your processes because of this?

SPEAKER_01 11:40

So, what we will do, we will advise people at the beginning of the process what the likely delays are. We have knowledge of a lot of councils. We know those that have got big backlogs and uh delays. Uh, we will advise them on how to make their application as acceptable as possible, and we will hold their hand through the process.

SPEAKER_00 12:03

And perhaps if we could just go back to that person you were talking about who had the years of delays. You were actually the second architects to be appointed, and the homeowner went to two appeals. The first with the first architect scheme, and the second with yours Green Planning Studio scheme. I think the listeners would probably like to know a little bit more about that. Did they just not live in a home for those years?

SPEAKER_01 12:25

What the person who faced delays had bought the site as a sort of garden area to an existing house. So they had the existing house and they were they are going to replace that with a larger dwelling. But they had done their money on the basis they'd get a second home on the site. And because it was an isolated site in the countryside, the paragraph 80 route was the only way they were going to get permission. Uh, and I mean, you just I mean, we would advise them every time, you know, you don't have to keep going with this. The the outcome isn't guaranteed. We will do our best, but in the end, it'll be the decision of one person. But no, they wanted to push it to the very end. And it's tragic. I find that really difficult.

SPEAKER_00 13:06

So these self-builders were receiving close advice from you, they were receiving guidance from you, but they weren't taking it. And that's such a shame, really, because you have a really strong vision of what you want, but at the same time, as you know, it's really important to work closely with your build partners and with your suppliers. They're the experts, they've got the handle on the situation. And yes, sometimes you do unfortunately have to take a step back and be realistic. But I think sadly, that is an example of what happens when you don't take that expert advice on board. That's really sad, Ruth. Really sad.

SPEAKER_01 13:41

I tell all our members and staff when they join that uh they have to have a sense of humour, otherwise the planning system will drive them ragged. But for clients and for people with, you know, having an overview of the planning system, I would say make the application as acceptable as possible. Do all the research right up front. Find out if the principle of planning on this site is going to be acceptable. If it's not, don't try. You will not get a house in a field in the greenbelt. So don't try.

SPEAKER_00 14:12

But let's say more positively that you've got a site that you, with your years of experience, feel is going to work really well. What do you then advise that they do?

SPEAKER_01 14:20

Once we've said, oh yes, in theory, you should be able to get permission on there, start looking at what would make that acceptable and be prepared to compromise. It's hard for people who've decided they want a very large house, but in fact, we can only justify something slightly smaller. Where they've committed to having a modernist flat roof house where we know we've got a very conservative local authority and there are perhaps planning policy or landscape assessments that suggest that that won't be acceptable. So that there are ways that we try to get people's aspirations in line with what's likely to be approved.

SPEAKER_00 15:00

Let's discuss the process for appealing non-determination cases. You let the first application go beyond the end of the six months non-determination period, and then you make a second application. And you appeal this once the second application goes beyond the target determination date, leaving the original application running for the LPA to determine if they want to avoid the appeal.

SPEAKER_01 15:21

We don't necessarily like doing it because in order to do the appeal, we have to come up with the reasons why they might have refused it. And they go, Oh, we didn't think of that one. But generally, we are trying to push the hand of the council to make a decision. But it's it's very important to know that in theory, what you are proposing should be acceptable.

SPEAKER_00 15:41

Before you pursue with an application, you fully vet your client's site and their plot to check that it's suitable in the first place, really.

SPEAKER_01 15:48

That research starts with a full site appraisal, and we don't take on any job in Green Planning Studio unless we've gone through that and we know its planning history, we know its physical constraints, we know its opportunities. One of the things that we do that not everybody does is to where there's a house that we want to demolish and build a new one, we will apply for certificates of lawful development to establish how big it could be with its permitted development. So the house is what it is on the site plus its permitted development. And sometimes the council have a replacement houses can be 30% over the original. So we've got three components that we can put into it. So we go through getting those certificates prior to doing the planning application. Can be extremely important in greenbelt sites to do that process. I think that having gone through establishing all of the opportunities of the site and then having a complete design service, I think it makes us unique in that most planning consultances are not designers and most designers, architects are not planning consultancies, not specialists, but we are specialists in both, which is extremely helpful. Including, I shall have to say, passive house. We we are passive house certified as well.

SPEAKER_00 17:05

And I'd just like to say to our listeners, if you are interested in finding out what life is like in a passive house home, I'd really suggest that you listen to Frame Technologies Podcast Episode One. In that episode, we talked to Chris and Jenny, who are both self-built homeowners. They built a home in Timberframe with frame technologies. But their home met passive house principles. And the conversation that they have with frame technologies is really interesting and it tells you a lot about what it's like to live in a passive house home. So, yes, now back to planning permission. I'm going to ask the question that our listeners are probably thinking, and it's not a nice one to ask, but what happens if someone doesn't get granted planning permission?

SPEAKER_01 17:41

People do get refused. They get refused for the wrong reasons, and we are a practice that started off primarily as an appeals practice. Developing the architectural side has slightly turned that around. I mean, we we try very hard to get planning permission, not refusals. If the refusal is unjustified, then we will almost certainly suggest that it's appealed. Sometimes then it could be tweaked to make it acceptable. Going to appeal is expensive and takes a long time. So if we can find a way of resubmitting a revised proposal that would be acceptable, we will always suggest that. But once we get to appeal, we've got a good success rate. I think for architectural appeals, around 50%. We also do appeals for other architects. So if people have had a scheme that they really like refused on design grounds in particular, I enjoy writing about other people's design. And we have I have a really good win rate on that. I am a bit brutally honest, by the way. If people present me with a design which I don't think is going to get approved, I will say.

SPEAKER_00 18:46

But it definitely comes from a compassionate place because you know we were reflecting on that client who had waited years and years for an outcome. If they had taken the very honest advice that you were giving them, they could have made plans to make alternative moves and start their self-build journey much earlier. So you've got a captive group of listeners. Ruth, what honest advice would you give self-builders who are about to start the planning permission process?

SPEAKER_01 19:13

The very first thing is don't buy the site until you know if you can develop it. Obviously, if it's your back garden, you've already owned it. But we the most important thing is to determine whether the principle of having a house on that site is possible. And once that's determined and we've looked at all the parameters that, apart from the planning, there's the views in and the views out, and the trees, potential flooding, neighbouring issues, sound, all sorts of things. I mean, we we will look in the overall to see what the opportunities and what the constraints are of the site. Then the next question is always how much money have you got? And the design process is always starts with a brief and a budget. And if the brief is too big for the budget, you have to ask the client which one's going to grow. And generally the budget is fixed. And at the moment, I should imagine reducing because of mortgage rates. So you've got to hold their aspirations to what they've actually got. I think it's very unkind to take people down a journey in which they have a fantasy house design that they'll never afford. So we're very realistic. It's very difficult for us at the moment to know where building costs are going. I mean, my own self-bill went over budget because of uh COVID, because of Brexit. Things are stabilizing quite a lot now, but it's still we're very cautious with costs. So, but it is a very important component of the briefing process. And then we get on to the great thing of design once we know how much and there, and then we start talking to them about their lives and how they want to live in the building and uh who's going to come and stay with them. And it that that's, I mean, for architects, that's that's the wonderful part of it. We you've got to go through that business of site appraisal and setting the parameters of the design before you go off on that on that uh joyful route, usually. That's the process of the uh the appraisal service is that I would say for at least 30% of the times I just say this site is not going to get planning permission. But we stop people buying sites, and that's I think important that they don't make massive financial just catastrophic decisions.

SPEAKER_00 21:22

But it's not just straightforward planning permission that you help your clients approach, is it?

SPEAKER_01 21:28

Planning isn't just planning applications. There's also applications for prior approval for permitted development, the certificates of lawful development to maximise the amount of building you can have, the certificates of lawful use to prove that the building that's been lived in for four years is now a house. There are ways of improving the position of a site without going for planning permission, and we will often do these before we make an application for a self build. And these are usually to use. Certificates of lawful development or certificates of lawful use. Certificates of lawful development can be used to prove that an existing building could be extended and we gain the maximum volume possible under permitted development as uh certificated for the existing building, then apply to replace that building with the new house. So that's the certificate of lawful development. There's also certificates of lawful use. Sometimes a residential use has been happening on a site without it ever having planning permission. And uh, you if you can prove that the um use has been in place currently for four years, um, and unfortunately that's going to change to 10 years when the levelling up bill becomes uh legislation. Um, we can establish a residential use on a site, which then makes it a lot easier to get planning permission for a new dwelling. There's a whole world of opportunity in planning that leads to a self-build or a conversion, and it's always worth talking to us about something that isn't just a plot. Existing buildings help enormously with the planning process. One area of existing buildings that we're getting a lot of inquiries about at the moment is that there is permitted development for converting agricultural buildings to dwellings, and in order to secure the de facto planning permission for that, you have to get a notice saying that you don't need planning permission. And it's called a prior approval notice, and it's covered under class Q of the General Committed Development Order. That's the techie bit. They are generally known as class Qs.

SPEAKER_00 23:40

Yes, frame technologies has also noticed a real increase in self-builders looking to convert pre-existing agricultural buildings into domestic homes. I was just wondering if you could perhaps give the listeners any advice on that. What are your thoughts? Have you encountered any issues? You know, what should a self-builder be considering when they're going through that process?

SPEAKER_01 24:01

You can get a class Q on an agricultural barn that was in use for agriculture in 2013 that is stone-built, brick-built, and even steel framed. Some local authorities kick back on the less conventional buildings, but we have a good case load of examples that uh show that you can convert agricultural buildings. As long as you stick to the very specific wording of the requirements of the law, they can't say no. There's no subjective element to class Q. And for that reason, it's it's an excellent way of getting a house in the countryside. The other thing is they can't put many conditions on it. So you don't have all of the and you have to provide details of the bin store, and goodness knows what else that gets attached to a planning consent.

SPEAKER_00 24:48

Now we touched on this earlier in the podcast, Ruth. You hinted that you were a self-builder yourself. And I was wondering if you could tell us a little bit about your self-building experiences, particularly your most recent property, Robin's Yard.

SPEAKER_01 25:03

My recently completed personal self-build is the second one I've built with the manager director of frame technologies, Simon Owls, and he's he built my original home. And we have been working together as client and architect and as consultant and timber frame supplier for more years than I'm going to let on. This current or this recently completed self-build was a very interesting build. And we've only ourselves to blame, really, because we could have pulled out of the site purchase because COVID had started. We did know about Brexit, but we went on anyway. And Simon was a key part of that journey in he was providing the design or the structural design drawings. He was liaising with us as architects for the scheme, uh, as he does with all of his clients. And then he arrived on site and put it up in two weeks, which is magic, but it was something very worthwhile doing. It's there's certainly a book in it. It's built, it's lovely. We got there.

SPEAKER_00 26:05

Your first self-build property was in Timberframe, and your second self-built property is also in Timberframe. Why Timberframe? What are the benefits in it for you?

SPEAKER_01 26:14

Use Timberframe again for Robin Shard, our new self-build, because we were trying to get as close to passive house as possible. My husband uh is a passive house designer. He we always liked subjecting ourselves to what we subject our clients to. You can get the insulation in a relatively small width of wall in timber frame that you can't in some other methods of construction. We like the sustainability, we like the fact it was quick, we like the off-site accuracy of the development of the building of the panels and the reduction in waste, all of the architects' reasons for using timber frame. But really personally, I just love that moment where you draw up to the site and suddenly there's a house there and there wasn't before. It's a very exciting process.

SPEAKER_00 27:01

Designing Robin's Yard obviously involved a carefully calculated process to meet your goals, and those goals were to design a house as closely as you could to passive house standards within your budget and within the size constraints of your plot. The house met the targets you set and it performs exceptionally close to passive house standards, just as you intended it to. So, what's it like to live in your new self-built house?

SPEAKER_01 27:30

You have to learn to drive a passive house home. For instance, the biggest issue we've had, we've got east-facing windows. And if the sun shines in a sum on a summer morning, the house will overheat. But at that point, the outside air is nice and cold. So everything opens up in the morning to draw that excess heat out. And then a minute outside is warmer than you want it to be, you close it down. And then in the evening you purge the house by opening all the windows and uh and drawing uh the excess heat out from get it down to nighttime temperatures. But that said, I mean, we we have the bedroom window open and it's ticking over at 21 degrees in there and it's wide open. And the rest of the house is ticking over at 24 in the summer. So it's lovely and it's about it's a really comfortable temperature. In the winter, with a little bit of added heat put in, we get it ticking over to about 20. Um, it's it's an interesting um aspect of it. Triple glazing, I'd never had it before. The house is so quiet. Now if I go and stay anywhere else, everywhere's too noisy. There's a garage full of gizmos that my husband is very keen on, and he's always telling me the state of the batteries off the photovoltaic. So, you know, it's it's a techies delight, but actually for me, it's just a really nice house to live in. It isn't to full passive house standard, and there are two key reasons. One is the electrician drilled massive holes between two distribution boxes, one in the garage, which isn't in the protected envelope, and one in the utility, which is, and we can feel the air travelling, cold air coming out of the garage. That's very annoying. The other one is entirely our own fault, it's a cat flap. And when the wind blows straight at the back door, the catflap comes open horizontally, and we have to negotiate with the cats locking it. So those those are the the entertaining sides of living in it. There is a passive house cat flap, yes, but it costs about £1,500, which was more than the cats cost. Better negotiating with your cats, I think. We didn't have to negotiate with the cats, you see, because we go, we really have to lock the cat flap and they're sat there going, this isn't working for us.

SPEAKER_00 29:37

Ruth, I think there could be some listeners today who, having heard you talk about Green Planning Studio and the issues surrounding planning permission, would actually really like your help and would like to know more about your company. So do you have any details that you can share with us?

SPEAKER_01 29:51

To contact us, uh, you can either email us at inquiries at gpsltd.co.uk or phone us on 01743-709-364. And the first people to speak to you will be our inquiries team who will set up the site appraisal and we'll take it from there.

SPEAKER_00 30:13

We really hope that you found the conversations about applying for planning permission helpful. And as always, Frain Technologies is here to help. So if you do have queries or concerns about planning permission, get in touch and the team will do all that they can to support you. But we also understand that not everyone has found their dream plot. That's why we recommend Build Store's Plot Search. It's the UK's premier land finding resource. After you sign up, you will have access to the UK's best database of self-building plot opportunities for land with guaranteed planning permission. Plot search is updated daily and it's dedicated to securing success for their users by only providing slots of land that could turn self-built dreams into reality. Simply head to www.plotsearch.buildstore.co.uk forward slash finding land. If you'd like to know more about building with Timberframe, you can head to the Frame Technologies website. That's www.fraintechnologies.co.uk. On the website you can find out more about frame technologies, what they do, and their three technology options from the Tet Vantage series. If you've already decided you want to build in Timberframe, getting a quote from Frame Technologies cannot be easier. Depending on how far you have progressed, there are two different types of quotation that Frame Technologies can provide to give you an idea of your cellboard cost. If you're in the early stages of your project and you have not yet decided on budgets and building solutions, frame technologies can advise you accordingly based on pre-planning drawings alone. This is not a final quotation, but the expert team can provide an indication of the costs for your build. If you have progressed further through the build process, Frame Technologies can provide a quotation based on approved planning drawings, proposed view values, airtightness targets, time scales, sight conditions and access. To begin the quotation process, simply send your drawings and supporting information by email. Frame Technologies accepts drawings in both DWG and PDF formats. And the email address is inquiries at frametechnologies.co.uk. We look forward to hearing from you soon.