“3. The permission hereby granted permits the conversion of the building to a dwelling. The existing building shall not be demolished and/or replaced with a new structure. Reason: the proposal is only acceptable as it involves the conversion of an existing building. Conversely, the construction of a new building in this place would be contrary to paragraph 55 of the National Planning Policy Framework.”
“The planner phoned me to tell me he was minded to approve but needed some reassurance that the building was structurally sound! I therefore quickly cobbled together (I mean professionally constructed!) a letter of comfort for him which did the trick.”
"The question whether an adverse inference may be drawn from the absence of a witness is sometimes treated as a matter governed by legal criteria, for which the decision of the Court of Appeal in Wisniewski v Central Manchester Health Authority [1998] PIQR P324 is often cited as authority. Without intending to disparage the sensible statements made in that case, I think there is a risk of making overly legal and technical what really is or ought to be just a matter of ordinary rationality. So far as possible, tribunals should be free to draw, or to decline to draw, inferences from the facts of the case before them using their common sense without the need to consult law books when doing so. Whether any positive significance should be attached to the fact that a person has not given evidence depends entirely on the context and particular circumstances. Relevant considerations will naturally include such matters as whether the witness was available to give evidence, what relevant evidence it is reasonable to expect that the witness would have been able to give, what other relevant evidence there was bearing on the point(s) on which the witness could potentially have given relevant evidence, and the significance of those points in the context of the case as a whole. All these matters are inter-related and how these and any other relevant considerations should be assessed cannot be encapsulated in a set of legal rules."
“All quoted fees are fixed, and have been equated using our vast experience of preparing, submitting and monitoring many planning applications, on a daily basis, for many years. We can never give any guarantees as to the success of a planning application but our advice is based on current planning policies and our most recent experiences of similar proposals.”
“Many thanks for your letter relating to the proposed conversion of our redundant building. My wife and I would like to go ahead with applying for planning permission for its conversion into a single residence. We would hope that we can get permission to build a room or two in the roof – I believe that you mentioned dormer windows during our discussion?”
“1. How detailed must the plan be that you submit? We have a friend who designed the major extension to our existing house, whom we would like to involve in any detailed planning. 2. How likely is it that we will be able to build an upstairs area, as we feel that the existing floor space would be too small/narrow to be viable without an upstairs area as well? 3. Given the tight restrictions on floor area that you predict, how likely is it that we would be allowed to also build a garage? If this is unlikely, would it be better for us to build a garage down the garden first, before applying for any permission for conversion of the kennels? We have/had permission to build a double garage up by our existing house, as part of the major extension that we did some 15 years ago. Unfortunately, we ran out of money at the time and also concluded that its placement, in front of the house, would block out too much light to the house. As a result we didn’t build the garage. Given that most of the planned work was done, is the permission for a garage still current? If so, can we apply to vary its location, so that it is built down the garden a little (so that we can hive it off when we sell the main house)? Many thanks for your advice, which is much appreciated.”
“On or about14 November 2016 the Claimants agreed to and did appoint the Defendant acting through Mr Venton as project manager for the intended building work to the Outbuilding and the new garage. It was an implied term of this agreement between the Claimant and the Defendant that the Defendant would carry out its obligations with all due care and skill. Further, in advising the Claimant in matters concerning the development, the Defendant continue to owe the Claimants a duty to act with care and skill.”
“Further or in the alternative, by Mr Venton giving the Claimant advice as to the works which would be acceptable to the local planning authority in circumstances where he was aware that they would rely on the same by carrying out works of construction for their residence for the their retirement, as he did and as is set out hereafter, the Defendant owed the Claimant a duty of care.”
“Upon the instructions of the client in this case, against my advice, the building was made slightly larger …”
“I consider that the answer to this question is the risks of harm to BDW, the employer, against which the law imposed upon URS, the structural designer, a duty to take care was the risk of economic loss that would be caused by a construction of a structure using a negligent design such that it was built containing structural deficiencies or defects.” 33. In my view, the judge’s answer was entirely conventional and correct. This was a standard duty imposed on a design professional which was co-existent with that professional’s contractual obligations. The risk of harm was that, in breach of the professional’s duty, the design of the buildings would contain structural defects which would have to be subsequently remedied. For the purposes of the Preliminary Issues, it was assumed that the design was not only defective but dangerous, requiring multi-million pound remedial works and, in one block, the evacuation of the residents. In such circumstances, it is impossible to conclude that the losses were somehow outside the scope of URS’s duty. He went on to make reference to the MBS six questions and observed: 35. I am not persuaded that Manchester BS[2022] AC 783 has any direct application to a case of this sort. The decision of the majority in Manchester BS, which at para 6 sets out the six-stage checklist, is designed to provide a useful way of analysing whether an alleged duty of care properly correlated to the harm claimed. It was, I think, primarily designed to analyse duties of care alleged to arise in novel situations which had not previously been considered by the courts, or where the type of loss claimed was unusual or stretched the usual boundaries imposed by the law. The checklist was not primarily intended to be applied by rote to the well-known and much-reported standard duties of care, such as those owed by doctors to their patients, or structural engineers to their employers, where the damage claimed is, respectively, the personal injury caused by a botched operation or the consequences of the errors in the structural design. As Mr Hargreaves submitted, this was not a claim that fell into any sort of grey area: it was, as he put it, “right bang in the middle”. 36. That said, I accept that the judgment of Lord Hodge DPSC and Lord Sales JSC in Manchester BS sets out a useful checklist which does, even in a conventional case like this, act as something of a “sanity check”