Knocking down and replacing a house

Demolishing and rebuilding on the same site may or may not need a planning application, so before you start navigating this potentially tricky route, take planning consultant Simon Rix’s advice

- Simon Rix

Lots of people, myself included, get very frustrated about many of the hurdles that have been put in place to stop people being able to get permission to build their own home. This is despite various warm words from policy makers down the years about supporting self-builders. Given the housing crisis facing us as a nation, many of these restrictions seem grossly unfair to anyone who aspires to build – or even just to live in – a home they can afford.

The specific design and energy performance of any new house should, of course, be carefully considered, but often the biggest consent hurdle is getting the principle of residential use established for a plot, i.e. getting the authorities to agree that any home can be built there. One way many self-builders have found to work through this is to find a plot that already has a house on it. That should mean that this ‘residential use’ hurdle has already been cleared, but there are still things to watch out for and other permissions that will be needed.

DO I NEED A FULL PLANNING APPLICATION?

If you’re knocking down to rebuild, the short answer is probably but not always. If you’ve read my previous articles for Homebuilding and Renovating, you will know about Permitted Development (PD) rights. These are circumstances where planning consent is deemed to have already been given.