Station to Station has teamed up with allPlanning give professional advice on planning issues to levy paying businesses within our business improvement district.
We are working with Rob Hewson, previously employed by Lambeth Council for many years in their planning department, who now runs his own planning consultancy: allPlanning.
In his own words:
“I first worked at Lambeth back in the mid-noughties for a couple of years as a planning officer. But my most recent stint there was for 3.5 years as a Principal Planner, where my responsibilities included managing a small group of planners mainly working in the south-east of the Borough. I left in July 2020 to set up my own planning consultancy.
More generally, I have spent 20+ years working in Local Authority planning departments, which has granted me a wealth of experience and also some ‘insider’ knowledge of how planning departments work; I think this is invaluable to my clients.”
Do you need planning permission?
Some things that once needed planning permission – for instance turning what is currently a shop into a restaurant – you can now do without any planning paperwork at all.
However, planning permission is still likely to be required if you want to:
- make any change to the exterior of your property
- change the use of your building
Here are some examples of works that will normally require permission or consent:
- Certain changes of use (such as changing a shop into any ‘sui generis’ use (a takeaway, micropub, or tattoo studio, for example)
- Installation of a new shopfront or windows
- Any external extraction equipment (flues etc)
- Any addition of volume (extensions)
- New shop signage (especially illuminate signage)
Why should you use a planning consultant?
In an ideal world, you would be able to contact the Lambeth planning department and get a quick answer about whether your project needs permission. But this is not possible these days (at least, not without the submission of an expensive pre-application enquiry).
So, if you can’t talk to the council and given that not knowing what you can do is risky, then you need to find an expert who can give you some answers. That’s where allPlanning comes in.
How the Station to Station planning advice service works:
If you need planning permission for something related to your business (including if you run an architectural practice), help in appealing a planning decision or advice on submitting plans, get in touch on info@stationtostation.com with the details of what advice you need.
We will refer your communication on to allPlanning who in turn will recommend the next steps.
If the matter is simple, we will simply communicate this via an email. If the service you require looks more complicated, you will be entitled to a free 15 minute telephone consultation with Rob where you can raise any concerns and he can give his professional advice.