Getting pre-application advice before anything is ordered
Pre-application advice is a paid service in which a planning authority tells you what it thinks of a proposal before you apply. On any sensitive building it is the most useful money spent in the whole process, and it is routinely skipped.
What it is
A written response from a planning officer, on a specific proposal at a specific address, saying whether it is likely to be supported and what concerns it raises.
It is advice rather than a decision. It does not bind the authority and it is not a permission. What it is, is the considered view of the person who would assess an application, given before you have spent anything on a product.
What it costs
A fee set by the authority, which for a householder enquiry is modest, and several weeks of waiting.
Against that, an application refused costs the application fee, the drawings, the months, and the cost of starting again. And an order placed for a product that turns out to be unacceptable costs considerably more than either.
The arithmetic is not close on any building where the answer is uncertain.
When it is worth it
| Situation | Worth it? | Why |
|---|---|---|
| Listed building | Nearly always | No threshold, assessed on merit, offence to get wrong |
| Visible slope in a conservation area | Yes | The judgement is the whole question |
| Inside the National Park, anything visible | Yes | Long views, and a specialist authority |
| Rear slope, unlisted, out of view | Rarely | Frequently permitted development anyway |
| A flat in a conservation area | Sometimes | Permission is needed regardless; advice shapes it |
| Anything genuinely marginal | Yes | That is exactly what it is for |
What to submit
Enough for the officer to form a view, and no more. An over-long submission on a small proposal wastes their time and yours.
- The address, and what the building is.
- A short description of what is proposed and why.
- Photographs of the roof slope in question.
- Photographs from every public vantage point the slope can be seen from.
- A location plan marking where each photograph was taken.
- The product proposed, named, with its profile and finish.
- A specific question rather than an open one.
Asking a specific question
The single thing that most improves the response, and it is free.
An enquiry asking whether a rooflight would be acceptable invites a general answer. One asking whether a named flush conservation unit, in a stated position on the rear slope, in a stated finish, would be supported, invites a specific one.
Better still, ask the question that actually decides your project: whether the front slope is possible at all, or whether two small units would be preferred to one larger one. Officers answer what they are asked.
Offering an alternative
A technique that gets a more useful answer than a single proposal.
Putting two options to the officer, and asking which they would prefer, converts a yes-or-no response into a steer. It also signals flexibility, which colours how the enquiry is received.
On a rooflight the natural pair is a larger unit on a less sensitive slope against a smaller one where the room actually wants it.
What the response is worth
Not binding, and worth a great deal in practice.
The officer giving pre-application advice is generally the officer who will handle the application. A proposal that arrives having addressed their stated concerns is one they have already partly agreed with, and it is submitted into a file that already contains their advice.
Where advice was given and followed, and an application is then refused, that is unusual and it happens. Circumstances change, consultation responses arrive, and the advice was always caveated as not binding.
The caveats it will carry
Worth reading rather than skipping, because they are meaningful.
That the advice is officer opinion rather than a decision. That it does not bind the authority. That consultation responses may raise matters not yet considered. And that it is given on the information supplied, which means incomplete information produces advice of limited value.
That last is within your control and it is the reason the photographs matter.
The Park Authority’s service
Worth using specifically, because of who answers.
The South Downs National Park Authority covers a large area with a specialist landscape remit, and the officers dealing with a rooflight in a Park village are the officers dealing with landscape and heritage matters across it. They know the settlement, the vantage points, and what has been accepted nearby.
That is a considerably better source of advice than any general guidance, and pre-application is how you reach them.
Reading the register first
The free research that should precede a paid enquiry.
Every authority publishes its planning register, searchable by address and area, with the application, the officer’s report and the decision. On a rooflight in a village or a terrace there will be comparable cases nearby.
Reading half a dozen of those tells you which slopes have been accepted, what products were specified and what concerns were raised. It costs an hour and it makes the pre-application enquiry sharper, because you can ask about the specific thing that is uncertain rather than about the general position.
Timing it
Where it sits in the sequence, and it is earlier than people put it.
Before any product is ordered. Before drawings are commissioned beyond what the enquiry needs. Before a start date is contemplated. And on a building in flats, alongside rather than after starting the freeholder’s consent, because that runs in parallel with nothing else.
The failure mode is treating pre-application as a step before applying rather than as a step before deciding, which loses most of its value.
What it will not do
Three things, so expectations are right.
It will not guarantee an approval. It will not shorten the statutory determination period. And it will not answer Building Regulations questions, which are a different system run by a different part of the council or by an approved inspector.
What it does is remove uncertainty about the planning judgement, which on a sensitive building is the largest uncertainty there is.
Duty planning services
The lighter option, and it has its place.
Many authorities offer a free or low cost duty service: a short conversation or an email response on a general question. It is not a considered view on a specific proposal and it is useful for establishing the basics.
Where a question is genuinely simple, whether a building is listed, whether an Article 4 direction applies, which authority determines an application, that is the right route and it is quick. For a judgement on a proposal, it is not a substitute for the paid service.
Using an agent
Worth considering on anything other than a simple case.
Somebody who submits enquiries in that authority regularly knows what the officers want to see, what the local policy emphasis is, and how to frame a question. On a listed building or a prominent site they earn their fee in avoided delay.
We install rooflights and we are not planning agents. On a straightforward enquiry we will help assemble the photographs and the product information; on a listed building or a complex site we will say that an agent or a heritage consultant is worth the fee.
What a good response looks like
So you know whether you got value.
It should say whether the principle is acceptable, identify the specific concerns, indicate what would address them, and say what the application would need to contain. A response that does all four is worth the fee several times over.
A response that restates policy without applying it to your building is worth going back on, politely, with a more specific question.
Neighbours, before the consultation
Not part of the formal service and it belongs in the same stage of the process.
An application triggers a consultation, during which neighbours are notified and may comment. A neighbour who first learns of a proposal from a council notice is more likely to object than one who was told about it over a fence.
On a terrace, or in a village where the parish council is engaged, that conversation costs nothing and it removes the commonest avoidable objection. It also occasionally produces useful information: that somebody else applied for something similar, or that a particular viewpoint matters to people locally.
Where the answer is no
The outcome people fear and it is frequently the most valuable one.
An officer saying that a front slope will not be supported has saved you an application fee, drawings, months, and possibly an order. And it usually comes with a reason, which points at what would be supported instead.
The useful response is not to argue but to ask what would be acceptable. That conversation is what the service is for.
What it costs not to do it
The comparison, plainly. Without advice: design a proposal, commission drawings, apply, wait, receive a refusal with reasons, redesign, apply again, wait again. That is the better half of a year and two fees.
With advice: several weeks, a modest fee, a proposal shaped by the concerns before it is submitted, and an application that is very likely to be approved first time.
Conservation area advice, and who gives it
A distinction worth knowing when framing an enquiry.
Most authorities have a conservation officer as well as case officers, and on a listed building or a sensitive conservation area proposal the conservation officer’s view is generally the one that decides it. A pre-application enquiry on a heritage matter is usually referred to them.
Which means the enquiry is worth writing for that reader: about significance, harm and justification rather than about a product. An enquiry framed in those terms gets a response in the same terms, and that response is the outline of the heritage statement the application will need.
Keeping the response
It goes with the paperwork, and it stays useful for longer than people expect.
The advice is submitted with the application, so the officer sees that the proposal followed it. It is worth having at a sale, as evidence the work was properly considered. And where a second rooflight is proposed on the same building years later, the earlier advice is the starting point rather than a blank page.
On a building likely to see further work, that accumulated record of what the authority has said about it is genuinely valuable.
What we recommend on a designated roof
We recommend pre-application advice on any listed building, anything visible in a conservation area, and anything visible inside the National Park, and we say so before quoting rather than after. We help assemble the photographs from the vantage points that matter, name the product and finish so the enquiry is specific, and we do not order anything until the position is known.
Where a customer decides against it, we will proceed and say clearly what the risk is: that a product ordered before the position is known may not be the product that gets consent, and that a made to size unit cannot be returned. That is their decision to make and it is better made knowingly.
It costs a fee and a few weeks. It is the cheapest part of the whole process and the one most often skipped.
Thinking about this job? We survey across Worthing, West Sussex and the South Downs and give you a fixed price before any work starts, with a 10-year workmanship guarantee.