planning applications & building regs

If your project is contentious, seeking pre-application advice from the council will help speed up the decision-making process for your case and increase your chances of success. We will work cooperatively with your planning officers to justify your proposal in a structured way and negotiate a positive outcome.

We will also find the chance to make amendments and improvements to your proposal prior to submitting your full planning application. By doing this, your officers will be more supportive of your proposal than they might otherwise have been.

If you have a larger project in development or one where the important thing is to establish the principle of what you want to do as quickly as possible, then the outline planning option could be the way to go. As the name implies, you need to provide fewer details than a full planning application, which means we can get your project designed and have your application completed in less time, thanks to our in-depth knowledge of building regulations across the North West.

Outline planning applications are for you if you want to get planning permission and then either sell the land or raise more money for the construction stage. Our Manchester based team will work with you to decide which elements of the scheme are important for the council and need to be decided at the outline stage.

Please note, though, that an outline application might not be the right option if the appearance of the buildings is important, for instance, many Green Belt projects or a development in a conservation area.

If you do submit an outline planning application and are granted permission, then you will have to follow it up with one or more reserved matters applications within three years of the council’s decision. These fill in all the details that were not in the outline application and will need to be settled before you can start building.

A reserved matters application needs to be taken as seriously as any other planning application – just because a local authority has given you outline permission does not mean they will automatically wave the reserved matters through. We will make sure that the details of your scheme are of a high standard and that there will be no avoidable delays in getting consent.

For many projects, you will need full planning permission. That means you will need to show the council wherever you are in the North West that what you are proposing complies with all the relevant national and local policies, taking into account a range of factors that can include transport, flood risks, air quality and possible harm to wildlife. We will guide you over all the hurdles of the process, including building regulations if necessary liaising with specialist consultants to make sure you get all the expert advice and support you need.

At the same time, we will be collaborating with you to come up with a design that fulfils your wishes and needs while being acceptable to the council. And after the application has been submitted, we will work with the planning officers to dispel any doubts they have about project, so that they are happy to grant consent.

When the council grants planning permission, it can include conditions to make sure that some key details are finalised by you and approved by the planning department before building can begin. These conditions often, for example, involve the external materials to be used in the building, or the exact arrangements for cycle or waste storage.

We pride ourselves on the care we take in every application we submit for project developments across Greater Manchester and will make sure that approval of details goes smoothly so that your project doesn’t have unnecessary delays at this late stage.

Unfortunately, not every planning application gets approval from the local authority in Greater Manchester or further afield. In some cases, for instance, when the council’s decision-making has clashed with their own policies or precedents or is out of step with national policy, it can be worth appealing. We have a strong record of success with planning appeals – we will let you know if we think you have a good chance of getting the council’s refusal overturned by the Planning Inspectorate and put together a thorough and clearly argued case so that your project ends up with the planning permission it deserves.