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Planning Permission and Building Control Regulations
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INSTALLATION OF OUR ALTERNATIVE ENERGY TYPES OF ALTERNATIVE ENERGY FOR YOUR HOUSE SELLING YOUR ENERGY AND CLAIMING ROCs |
Planning Matters No planning permission is needed for Solar Thermal, Solar Photovoltaic, Ground Source Heat Pumps, Biomass Burners Though it most cases planning consent may be needed and it is best to check with your Local Authority. Especially if your building is listed or is in a conservation area. They don't always know a great deal about installation of alternative energy. We found it easier and no doubt quicker, when we gave them all the necessary information. You could ask your installer to prepare a proposed work schedule with all the information together with the necessary guidance from the Office of the Deputy Prime Minister. For Biomass burners heaters At Present Planning permission is needed for installation of Wind turbines, though this may change within the next six months.
Useful information for Solar Photovoltaic Installations There is a section on the grant form which states you have obtained permission from the Local Authority. The latest advice from the Office Deputy Prime Minister (ODPM) states ODPM released the Companion Guide to Planning Issues Pages 144-149 of this document cover solar PV and in particular, point 13 (p147) 13. The technology will be familiar to most and from the planning point of view, whilst there are clearly implications for listed buildings and the sensitive front elevations of some conservation areas, in general ‘solar panels’ are to be encouraged. In some cases, provided the installation is not of an unusual design, or involves a listed building, and is not in a designated area, PV is regarded as "permitted development" and is thus deemed not to require a planning application. Unless the panels are of an unusual design, they should be treated as being within the plane of the existing roof slope for the purposes of Part 1, Class B1(b) of the Town and Country Planning (General Permitted Development) Order. Once our Local Authority Planning Department were reminded of this they were swift to give permission for our installation! If you have problems quote this .
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Building Control Regulations For Solar Thermal and Photovoltaic Planning permission is not be needed for you installation. However building control should be informed of the work being carried out so that it is deemed safe. There is a booklet on the ODPM website titled Building Regulation Explanatory Booklet. It is a good idea to consult this booklet to check whether building control need to know of your completed work... in most cases they will! We contacted our Local Authority Building Control Officer to tell him of our intention to install solar Photovoltaic Panels. Although this was not technically necessary, we were aware that with the forthcoming 'Buyers Packs' that all householders will have to prepare in the next 18 months or so before their houses can be sold, it would be wise to have our installation approved and certified by Building Control, just in case we decided to move in the future. There was an issue due to the extra weight load on the roof. We then asked if he could make an assessment as to whether our roof would be strong enough to support the extra weight. He was unable to do this... wait for it... until the solar panels had been fitted. His remit is only to assess whether the work carried out is structurally sound before he can sign the building work off. Oh, and for the benefit of this we would have to pay £350.00. We could therefore be put in a position that we revamp the roof with insulation and felt and replace some of the worn tiles, fit the Solar PV only to have the building control say that the whole lot has to come off so that the roof could be strengthened by the addition of extra roof rafters!!!
Biomass Burners or Heaters Simon Ducker of Jones-Nash.co.uk has written to tell us that Biomass heaters will need building control approval. For boilers under 30kw a registered Hetas engineer can certify this. However for boilers over 30kw the building control officer has to be notified and an assessment made.
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