Hurry if you want planning consent!

If you are in Wales and are thinking of applying for planning consent for antennas (or anything else), you would appear to have just a few days or weeks to avoid a substantial increase in the fee.

This is from a letter to all local authorities issued by the Welsh Government this morning:

The other way of approaching planning as the moment is that these departments are so poorly resourced in both monetary and staff terms, that now is a good time to not apply for consent and qualify for lawfulness under 'the four year rule' if - and I stress the if - your local conditions mean that a complaint from the neighbourhood is already fairly low. 

Remember, though, that four years is a very long time to hope nobody sends you an enforcement notice.  But if you make it, your antennas become immune from enforcement.  It is not, of itself, unlawful to erect a structure without consent.  But, obviously, failing to comply with an enforcement notice as a result of doing so, is.

If, after that point, someone complains, you do not need to apply for a Certificate of Lawfulness, but you can if you want to; it has really very little merit, despite many Council's tendencies to claim you might have trouble selling your house without such a certificate. This is really just pique at being powerless to do anything.  If someone buying your house actually wants the antennas (unlikely), then it's much cheaper and less hassle just to buy an indemnity from your solicitor, costing about £50 as a one-off fee. 

The other piece of advice always worth keeping in mind is that, if you claim lawfulness by expiry of time limits or by being granted consent, then make sure you apply for the tower and antenna separately, not together.  That is advice from a former planning inspector, and ensures that, if you remove an antenna and change it for another one, you do not run the risk of someone saying you need entirely new consent for the new antenna placed on the same tower.  It's a subtle difference, but an important one.