New Plan...

A lot has happened since the last post and in the last 7 days in fact - too much to share all the details. Briefly, 2 out of 3 Councillors agreed with the Planners, so we are having to make a local appeal using the Local Review Body. This will take a few months and we are not confident about the outcome because the planners are justifying the refusal based on the Howe of Cromar Landscape Character Area policy. They seem to like grey, 1.5 story triangles. Shame.

This has turned things upside down a bit. and in keeping with that feeling we are now planning to renovate the cottage, live there and possibly then try to build. Yes it will be small, but we will be in our own house and it will be fin. We have until August, so things need to start happening quickly. As a result I've been putting my paternity leave to good use and been gutting the internals of the cottage. Day by day things have progressed and I've refined my plasterboard removal skills. Pictures are worth a thousand words so here is a brief low down.

Fireplace 2 - ridiculous. (The black granite is the original fireplace)

Dodgy or what?

 I decided to have a bonfire to get rid of some of the timber. Wind is a real problem up here.

The progression of the bonfire... Woops!

Opening up the cottage

Steady on my feet 

Bucket in the loo?

Lots of Support for ... Refusal!

We got a total of 10 independent letters of Support for the application, which was fantastic. Unfortunately on Thursday we received some very disappointing news, which is that despite the work we did, the application has been "recommended for Refusal". What this means in an official sense is that the Planning Office does not support or approve of the application, based on Planning Policy.

So what do you do... well in response, we have done a lot fun reading of Planning Policy. The policy has a hierarchy of detail which is:

• National - Scottish Planning Policy
• Aberdeenshire - Local Development Plan
• Individual Policy
• Supplementary Guidance
• Details/Advice/Techincal Advice Notes

Having read other refusals, applications and Policy, as well as the planner's feedback to us so far - it all indicates that the justification for refusal in his Conclusion will be based on SG LSD2: Layout, siting and design of new development.

I have spent some time studying the Technical Advice Note and I believe he must be honing in on Part D (iv) Aesthetics, 4. How does the style of the design suit the location? but I can see that he could hand pick any number of options in the list. 

Interestingly (read: depressingly/annoyingly/ridiculously) this part of the advice - (D(iv)4) - states "This issue is to do with gut-reactions, based on what you would see from the street-side when you first see the development........" and goes on to make it even less defined! There is even a caveat at the end of the "Things to Consider" for this point, which is "Any other relevant considerations".

That, in writing, confirms that we can be justifiably denied permission based on a subjective interpretation. You could argue that a planner would take more than one part of the guidance or advice in to his decision making, but it certainly gives him a good way out which is based on "gut feeling" or "any other relevant consideration". Perhaps I am over reacting, but it doesn't sit very well.

The situation now is that we will have to wait and see (more waiting...) if 2 out of 3 of our Marr Ward Councillors are prepared to vote in favour that it should be reviewed by the Marr Area Committee. If that happens it will be presented at the Committee on the 10th March, where I'll have 10 minutes to make our case. If they reject it, we will have to go to Appeal.

What a journey it is becoming.

Finn's Built House

Finn came home from nursery today and thrust a picture "for you Daddy" in to my hand.
"Wow Finn, what is it?!"
"It's a house."
"Which one?"
"The new one, the built one. I want it like this".

Well, here it is:

We have had a few letters of support in the system already which is positive, and we'll hopefully be able to get a few more which might bolster our position. In the meantime we're quite literally just waiting.

We did save ourselves a cool £1000 by changing the upstairs layout from a 4 to 1 bed, because the "Developer Obligations" (a way the local council raises money for themselves off house builders) was re-assessed and reduced. Result!

Planning submitted

Happy New Year!

Christmas involved a large family gathering at Clay House and the only present even worth talking about is the kids' Haba marble run. :-)  And for anyone who hasn't seen or used Google Cardboard, you need to get involved - simply incredible!

As planned (how long it's been since I could say that!) we have submitted the planning application. I've notified our only neighbour, and now we wait and see what happens. Let's hope we've managed to compile something that passes this acid test..

Building the case, but not yet the house

A long silence which, to be honest is not because of apathy but a lack of news.

Since the last post, we've just been refining & revising the application. We're nearly there but because Christmas is around the corner, we're all going to take 5 and have a break, and come back in January with a rejuvenated submission.

Here is a drawing of the revised design drawn to scale against the old ("too much massing") design. What do you think?!

Last post I mentioned Jim Dyas Davidson's Flickr. It turns out he lives in the valley below the plot, which is a lovely coincidence.

Happy Christmas 2014. Let's see what happens next year!

Planning to fail us?

The past couple of weeks have been frustrating. Having spent months designing the house we want, having invested a lot of brain power and significant funds in architects fees, we had been very hopeful about the upcoming planning submission.

Some brief scene-setting to bring you up to speed: we withdrew the original planning application in August and parted with the original architect. The feedback from planning on that submission was also not great - they specifically wanted less "massing" and less "fenestration". 

We appointed the current architects and have so far had a fantastic relationship and are working well together. We worked on reducing the massing and fenestration whilst maintaining our design requirements and aspirations.

So - we have spent the past 8 weeks actively refining the design. Before hitting the "go" button though, we had the foresight to approach the planners informally to understand their take on the new design...

They still don't like it though. I could talk at length about our disappointment but won't. We are doing everything we can to try and rectify the situation. So, you won't hear much on this side I would imagine, before New Year... During this time we also have consider concessions we might be prepared to make to the design in order to satisfy the planners, something we are really finding hard to deal with.

A final thought: at what point was it decided that it is a worthwhile idea to preserve old buildings that were built for function, and not built for their architectural merit? 

Uncovering some History

We had not investigated the history of Broombank very much, but had chatted to Mabel Lawson - our 70+ year old neighbour who has lived above us at Hillhead since she was 5 years old. She remembers "running about with the 4 boys" who lived at Broombank when she was young (i.e. around the 1930's?).  We plan to chat to her more... 

Jaimin did some online searches and has found that historically, the Anderson family are associated with the plot as croft farmers. The earliest tie seems to be around 1863, with William Anderson, b. 4th March 1824 in Bogstone, Logie Coldstone, d. 27th May 1863 in Broombank, Tarland.

From what the internet has to offer, if you can follow this:

- George Anderson (b. 1833) (brother or son of aformentioned William?) married Isabella Coutts (b. 21st June 1853) and they lived at Broombank. She had 4 daughters and 2 sons between 1879 and 1888. 

One of the daughters, Annie Elizabeth Thomson Collie Anderson (b. 1886)seems to have had 2 husbands or partners - James Dinnie & Frank Glenesk (b. 14th Nov 1890) and and at least 3, possibly 5, children: Alexander, George, Jane, Mary Ann and Isabella.

 - Mary Anne Dinnie Anderson (21st Jan 1906 - 1983) was apparently illegitimate

- Isabella Glenesk Anderson, (b. 21st June 1912 at 1, Adelphi, Aberdeen) was also apparently illegitimate

This brings us to at least 2010 when this post on rootschat.com provided this fascinating history and 3 potential sources of good information: 

• daughter of Isabella Glenesk Anderson, granddaughter of Frank & Annie, known so far only as Glenesk
• granddaughter of  Mary Ann Dinnie, aka BlessedBe
• dorothy2710 - can't work out the exact relationship

To try and get some reliable information I have posted this topic on rootschat and can't wait to see if anything comes of it!

In all the digging I also came across some very good professional photos on Flickr and tumblr taken in 2011 by a local photographer, James Dyas Davidson.