Planning permissions ..

[Paul - xxx]

I'm a school caretaker (Site Supervisor is official title!!) and have a project coming up that will be roughly £25k and will necessitate planning permission. It's a pretty simple canopy, with electrically operated roller shutters as walls .. similar to

but differently coloured!

3m high at the back, 2.4 front and 4m wide and 7m long with 5 roller shutters.

Went on the government planning portal and the option most closely applicable to us is a house and conservatory! I have absolutely no experience of presenting planning permissions, though the portal looks easy enough to follow and we have all the details to hand in pdf form, almost ready to submit .. ;) I am technically minded, having Mechanical & Production engineering qualifications, so think I should be able to work out what needs doing easily enough ..

Does anyone have any expertise or experience in this area? Would the house/conservatory route be worth taking or would it be likely to fail due to wrong attributions?

Reason we're doing it ourselves is we've dealt with all the contractors before for other projects and have confidence in them to do the jobs, but the local council will take a 10% fee to manage it for us, and we reckon £2500 would be better spent on other school stuff. The Head has confidence in me to manage the project and I reckon I can do it, but would like to gain a bit of confidence before it becomes properly official ....

Any help or guidance would be much appreciated. Replies telling me to piss off and use the council, supported by good reasons why, would also be acceptable .. ;)

[Bob Minchin]

I'd talk to your local planners. They will likely be borough council people and the education will be county council so they should not be talking to one another. They will be interested in the appearance of the result mainly but another dept you need to talk to is building control who are interested in the "how" side of the project and given that it is a public building it will be esp. important to get that right.

Bob

[Owain]

No, it's Full Planning Consent you need, because you're not building/ adding to a single dwelling.

All you will need is plans of the site (the council will usually sell you an Ordnance Survey plan for a fee, or if it's a state school the Geog Dept may have online access to Ordnance Survey or the council's GIS system, and elevations.

I don't know what you're using it for, but you can get roller shutters fitted to shipping containers and they can be had pretty cheaply.

Owain

[Paul - xxx]

Thanks for that. It's going to be used for an outside shade area for nursery children .. the wall it's being built off is south facing, so the area gets minging hot. The shutters are so we can also store outdoor playthings, bicycles, toys etc reasonably safely and free up space internally.