MegaSack DRAW - This year's winner is user - rgwb
We will be in touch
I thought I'd share a recent home moving experience in the hope it helps avoid others making the same mistake I did. During our home moving process, we commissioned our solicitors to do the usual local searches. Regards planning, the standard syndicated service they subscribe to brought back no concerning planning activity. The council report listed about 20 odd development programs relevant to the area our new property was in. These were wide ranging so I didn't think it necessary to research them all, but as is the way with conveyancing nowadays, the solicitors didn't look into them for us, but simply recommended we should do our own research. So I looked online for local planning schemes and found the council's plan out to 2026. Next to the property are open fields and the plan drew development boundaries excluding these fields. So that all seemed good, no fear of a high rise being built next to my nice open vistas. After moving (there's the mistake) I decided to ask the council when they were updating/replacing their local plan. They sent me the draft with an interactive map which marked the adjacent greenfield site for allocated housing. So if your solicitor leaves part of the searches up to you, check any future draft plans the council might be working on, and don't rely on the existing one, even if it is allocated out to the future. I feel a numpty for not doing enough research but lessons learned and all that.
That sucks. It's a hard lesson to learn but first rule of Planning is you don't own your view. If you don't want someone to build on a bit of land, buy it (or the option). Any field adjacent to development should be viewed with suspicion (as someone will have an option on it). Good new is it all takes ages so they won't be starting any time soon.
Yes good point, new owner moved in near a relative....hope it's not you....only to find planning proposals for building on open fields behind him.
Best thing is Google the street name, proposals come up, solicitor searches did not reveal anything.
When I look I pretty much assume any green field adjacent to existing housing will be built on.
I remember my Dad remarking to me +30 years ago regarding "unless you own the land, you don't own the view" when we were looking at a house on the edge of Leeds.
We bought somewhere else, but the house we looked at isn't on the "edge of Leeds" any more...
This is a good example of our local plan, from 2013 and the only construction has been on the northern section of the one labelled "300 houses", and just in the last couple of years.
https://newtowneildon.weebly.com/newtown-proposals.html
On the other hand just because it's identified as a site of potential or best fit it for a settlement it doesn't mean that it will get built on, or any time soon after that new plan is published.
Where I used to live We have areas identified for potential housing in the LDP that are unlikely to get built on as the present land owner has no intention so selling it off for development, and hasn't for years.
We also had plenty of areas put forward by landowners to be in the plan to hike it's worth up so that if they did ever decide to sell its actually saleable for housing.