Clients always ask us, ‘is it difficult working with the planners?’ Truth is, some are easier than others but generally planners care and want the best for their areas of responsibility. Working with a pro active planner will definitely lead to a much better scheme.

Planning officers know the character of a specific location, understand national and local planning policies, are familiar with local materials, vernacular building types and construction techniques. They also help manage local expectation. Get a planner onside and you’ll massively improve your design/scheme and, of course, its chances of approval.

The main difficulty all planning departments have, is they’re massively under resourced. They simply can not keep up with demand and so applications inevitably take longer. Also, a lot of applicants don’t understand the process and become frustrated through their own naivety. Neither one of these points makes planners difficult to work with.

The current planning system works, it’s just difficult to implement with low resources.

Walters Architects recently submitted a design for a new replacement house in Derbyshire and it was not popular with the local residents.

Whilst neighbours demonstrated resistance, the planners liked the design and worked with us to try and pacify common opinion. This is an odd situation but after many iterations a more acceptable proposition was achieved and hopefully we will now face less opposition.

Because of the amount of local opposition, this particular application will be called into Committee and we will have the opportunity to discuss our intentions with council members. We are always nervous at these events because it can go either way. That said, with the planning departments supporting the application, we know we’ve adhered to all polices and good design guides so it is always harder for a committee to resist an otherwise robust application.

Wish us luck.