Sites with planning permission.

The consent is right: build it.

A permission comes with conditions and a set of drawings that were never meant to be built from. Stage 4 of the RIBA Plan of Work, Technical Design, is where that changes: the details, the specification and the coordinated information a contractor needs to price and build, with the engineers' and the specialists' designs drawn in.

Stage 4 is also when the Building Regulations application goes in and the pre-commencement conditions are discharged. Building Regulations approval is separate from planning permission, and most schemes need both. At Cliveland Street in Birmingham the site came with another practice's permission; we produced the working drawings and the Building Regulations information, discharged the conditions and stayed to handover. Read the project.

The consent could be better.

A Section 73 application asks for the same development under different conditions. Because the approved plans are usually listed in a condition, varying that condition is how a material change to the design is made, and the result is a new permission for the same development. It cannot change the description of the development, or extend the time allowed for starting or for reserved matters.

A change too small to matter goes as a non-material amendment, decided in twenty-eight days with no appeal; the council weighs it together with any earlier amendments. Where the description has to change, a fresh application can do better than the consent that came with the site: on Mill Lane in Kineton a plot with permission for three houses was granted four at the same height. Read about changing a permission.

Only an outline: design the detail.

Outline permission settles whether a site can be developed and how much it can take. The five reserved matters are defined in law: access, appearance, landscaping, layout and scale. Each one left reserved has to be approved before the work it covers can start, and every detail has to stay inside the limits and conditions the outline set. Reserved matters must be applied for within three years of the outline, and the development begun within two years of the last approval, unless the council set other periods.

The reserved matters are where the homes themselves are designed, to the coordinated Stage 3 set that goes in for approval. At Jubilee Gardens in Chipping Campden thirty homes came to us as an outline with every detail still reserved; our reserved matters and condition discharges carried them to homes that were built and sold. Read about outline permission.

Conditions come before the start.

A condition that must be met before development begins means exactly that: nothing authorised by the permission can start until it is complied with. Details are submitted in writing and the council has eight weeks to decide, or a longer agreed period. If there is no decision within twelve weeks it must return the fee, and there is a right of appeal.

A council needs the applicant's written agreement before it imposes a pre-commencement condition, except on an outline permission. Conditions are best read the day the permission arrives, so the reports and drawings they ask for are ready before the programme needs them. At Jubilee Gardens four condition discharges settled the detail down to the coursing, with stone sample panels built on site. Read about discharging conditions.

A lawful start keeps it alive.

A full permission normally has to be begun within three years. Work begun in breach of a true condition precedent does not normally count as a start, so the conditions that must come first are dealt with first. A certificate of lawfulness can then confirm that a start was the lawful implementation of the permission, and the certificate is permanent. Read about lawful development certificates.