planning

[thundercrack]

hi, does any one know anything about the government telling the local council only to pass plans for applications in built up areas, and not rural ones like mine, even though there are 50+ houses in the road, most being built in the last 10 years and a estate with about 30 houses in at the end of the road? the council say this was brought into force in 2004, and my council has a quota of a number of allowed properties in rural areas, and this has been reached, so no more until 2012.
does this sound right, or has my building inspector fallen off her trolley?
I thought the goverment wanted as many houses built as possible to house our fast growing population.
( they turned my application down three times as they didn't like the design of the house,) now they are telling me the quotas used up.
I am gutted!

[fredpuli47]

Quite likely right, on paper. Villages in my region have a supposed quota of so many new dwellings in a given period. .Fact is though that everything the government has said and done recently points to these supposed quotas being ignored in practice,and soon, if not now.In the end, the government decides. The government has laid down that there'll be so many dwellings per hectare in rural areas and so many in towns.It has overall targets for the whole country and for regions of it. In our region it will be utterly impossible to achieve the targets for the region if these 'quotas' are in force.We got a clue when there was a regional plan, published not long ago, which said that there would be dwellings built up to a certain number. Just recently the government issued a few qualifications of it, pursuant to policy. One was that henceforth we should read 'up to' [the given number] as 'from' the given number. That's a slight difference!

At a guess a place with that many recent houses is not likely to find that a quota of just a few is tenable, in the light of government ambitions.By the way, at the very same time as this 'quota' was in force in one village, the government proposed developing it by adding several hundred houses to it. In the end they went to another village and permitted their being built there.

[buildersmate]

If you want to understand the bigger picture, start by looking here.
http://www.planninghelp.org.uk/learn-about-the -planning-system/regional-spatial-strategies/
This website is run by the Campaign for the Protection of Rural England, so it is actually promoting the reverse of what you are wanting - but there isn't a better Government site that explains what has been happening in the last 4 years.
The general policies haven't changed - towns and cities have settlement boundaries and within these, appropriate development is permitted. Outside them is countryside where it is against policy to inject new developments. In addition Councils have always had quotas, but there has been less obligation to ensure completion of quotas. Councils had to show development sites in their 10-yr Local Plans - mostly within existing settlement boundaries - but not always. This would show where most new development would occur.
New one-off houses as infill were always part of the plan, and although Planners would not know eactly where these might crop up, an allowance for them was included.
As others above have pointed out, some Councils (particularly rural ones in the south) were dragging their heels and few houses were going up - even on named sites. Couple this with Government's newly found desire to increase the housing density on sites (no. per hectare).
In short, you've fallen foul of changing policies. new houses are required, but not at a price of destroying lots of farmland in rural areas. Your plot is presumably in countryside, and whilst you might have got permission as a one-off, even against the policy of no new houses in countryside, if there is now an additional policy to limit to specific number in that area and the number is reached, then you are asking for something that is in contrave

[buildersmate]

The last few words got lost by AB - but you get the gist.

[thundercrack]

thanks for all the answers, builers mate is right, it is an infill, in my garden. we are in the building area and were told over a year ago that we could build. we submitted plans but were turned down as they didn.t like the flood precautions and the design of the house. we altered that, and sent in a draft copy for a quick check to see if it would be o.k. we got a letter back saying that the roof should be hipped and not gabled, and not to make the house look too much like the house next door. we redesigned the house again and sent another draft in for appraisment. this has now been looked at by another planning officer who has taken some of the workload from our original officer. He has replied that we should have a gabled roof as hipped is not in sympathy with the rest of the street, and we should make the house look like next doors to blend in! and has informed us the allocation is now used up, so no hope.
I am all for preserving the countryside, but this is an infil in a road full of houses, and would enhance the outlook. also, there is a tractor company right opposite, so not a place of outstanding beauty, just a bit rural.