If you run a Holiday Let or Serviced Accommodation, you'll want to hear why we have just obtained Planning Approval for a Change of Use from Residential Flat to Short Term Holiday Accommodation on this first floor flat in Fife's East Neuk... Earlier this year, The Scottish Government introduced legislation which will require operators of Short Term Holiday Lets to apply for a License to continue to operate (similar to the HMO Licensing Scheme). The Licensing Scheme is aimed at improving the quality and safety of Short Term Holiday Lets, giving Local Authorities more control over the properties in their area and helping them to manage areas of high density. One of the main aspects of the Licensing Scheme is that it gives each Local Authority the power to implement Short Term Holiday Let "Control Areas". Designating all or parts of their areas as Control Areas gives Local Authorities a mechanism to manage the number of Short Term Holiday Lets. Where Control Areas are implemented, any property operating as a Short Term Holiday Let for more than 28 days of the year will require Planning Consent to approve a Change of Use from Residential to Short Term Holiday Accommodation. Outside of Control Areas, it will continue to be the case that it is for the Local Authority to consider whether any change of use is material and therefore requires Planning Consent on a case-by-case basis. The City of Edinburgh Council is the first Local Authority to consult on the introduction of a Short Term Let Control Area. Their proposal is that the entire City should be a Control Area. If this is introduced, the number of Short Term Holiday Lets in Edinburgh is likely to reduce significantly. There is a concern within the sector that, even if a Local Authority hasn't designated an area as a Control Area, they may still make Planning Consent for Change of Use a requirement of the Licensing Scheme. Or they may not issue a License until a Certificate of Lawfulness has been obtained to formally confirm that Planning Consent for Change of Use is not required. The Timeline... • Each Local Authority is required to have it's Licensing Scheme in place by 1st October 2022 . This should include a decision on Control Areas. • No new Short Term Holiday Lets can be established after 1st October 2022 without a License. • Operators of existing Holiday Lets will need to have applied for their License by 1st April 2023 . • All Licenses must be in place by 1st July 2024 to continue to operate a Short Term Holiday Let. This Licensing Scheme will have significant implications for the Short Term Holiday Let and Serviced Accommodation sector so, if you are operating a Holiday Let and want to know more, feel free to get in touch.

One of the most common alterations to a property is to reconfigure the internal layout by adding, removing or altering walls. The most common of these at the moment is removing a wall between a Kitchen and Dining to create an open plan layout. Internal alterations don't always require building warrant, especially if they are non-loadbearing. If the wall is loadbearing, it will most likely require the services of a Structural Engineer and an Architect to submit a Building Warrant to get approval for the alterations. A common question is: how do I know if it's a loadbearing wall or not?

If you're looking for a building plot or a potential development site, there are a number of ways to carry out your search; online search engines, estate agents, property development magazines etc. The main problem with this approach is that, generally, the sites that you find will already have some form of Planning Approval in place. This means that most of the value of the site has already been unlocked. If you are looking to maximise profit on a project like this, ideally, you would find a site before it has Planning Approval. Land can be worth very little (or sometimes nothing at all) without Planning so finding sites before they have Planning Approval allows you to negotiate a much better price with the owner. I spend a lot of time driving around looking for potential sites which I can add value to by obtaining Planning Approval

When searching for a Building Plot or Development Site, one of the main aspects of the site appraisal will be to establish what type of Planning approval may be possible. If the site is on the market, it will generally have some type of planning approval (be it historic or current, outline or full), a description of which will usually be included in the sales particulars. Tip: carry out your own due diligence on the current Planning status as it is not always described accurately in sales brochures. I've seen instances where a site's potential for obtaining Planning approval is described very positively but, upon digging into the Planning documents in more detail, this isn't the case. If the site isn't on the market, you must carry out your own research on the different aspects relating to Planning. The value of a site can be increased dramatically (sometimes infinitely if it is costing money and worth nothing) by obtaining Planning Permission. When assessing the likelihood of being able to obtain Planning Approval for a potential development site, this is my 3 step due diligence process: 1. Research the planning history of the site. Search the local council planning applications to establish if current or historical approvals exist for the site. The opportunity to develop this site may never have been previously explored or you may find multiple historical applications. These may have positive or negative outcomes but they will potentially help you build up a picture of what may or may not be possible with the site. For example, a previous application to build 19 houses might have been refused but a subsequent application for 6 houses was approved. This gives you a broad indication of Planning's appetite for what can be accommodated on the site. If you find an application which has been submitted very recently, you might come to the conclusion that someone has beaten you to this site. There are generally two different types of Planning permission - Outline and Full (or Detailed). Outline Planning provides a decision in principle on the type of a development proposed i.e. the applicant is looking to establish if the site is suitable for, for example, 3 single-storey houses. The detail is yet to be developed but the principle can be assessed. Once a decision has been made on Outline Planning, Full Planning permission must still be obtained. Obtaining Outline Planning approval is no guarantee that Full Planning approval will also be forthcoming. When developing the proposal to a sufficient level of information that it can be assessed as a Full Planning application, previously-unexplored issues may arise such as drainage design or flooding. Full (or Detailed) Planning allows the Planning Authority to assess a fully developed proposal against all relevant planning policies and make a final decision. If the approval is recent enough, the approved documents are usually available through the local council's planning portal. If you intend to deviate from the approved Planning drawings, you must obtain further approval either by amending the current approval (if the deviations are not too significant) or submitting a further Full Planning application for the revised proposals. When researching the Planning history of a site, Full Planning approval is, generally, more valuable than Outline Planning Planning Conditions - If you are considering a site which you establish has Planning approval in place, be sure to review the conditions of the Approval. Planning may have issued an Approval on the condition that the applicant provides further information. This may be relatively straighforward such as providing further details of finishing materials for Planning to agree upon or they might be more onerous such as specific drainage designs or further reports/surveys to be carried out. These conditions may have cost implications which need to be factored in to your site appraisal. 2. Establish Planning Restrictions Local Development Plan - Each council has a local development plan which sets out their objectives and designations for the various different parcels of land within their council. Check the local development plan to establish if the site is already designated for a particular use i.e. employment land, housing etc. Or if it is in the greenbelt and, therefore, how that will affect the planning policies against which the application will be assessed. Building Listing - Historic Environment Scotland assign listings to buildings of historical and/or architectural importance. The higher the designation (A being the highest and C being the lowest in Scotland), the more onerous the Planning process becomes. If there is an existing building on the site, is the building listed? What is the listing and how will this impact what alterations you can seek approval for? Can it be demolished or does it have to be retained? Conservation Area - If the site is in a Conservation Area, what are the relevant planning policies and how might this affect what is achievable on site. The proposal will be assessed in greater detail to ensure that the development maintains or enhances the character of the local area. 3. Find Precedent Examples If there are good examples in your locale where a similar project has already obtained planning approval, this will stand you in good stead in your future discussions with planning. The fact that the precedent has already been set, generally, gives a level of comfort that an approval is possible. For example, if all of the houses in your street are identical and they have all split their garden up to create a new plot at the rear and yours is the last house on the street not to have done so, it would be a relatively safe assumption that Planning will not be fundamentally against the proposal. The detail will need to be ironed out as you work through the process but you at least know that the principle is acceptable. However, the opposite is also true. If there are multiple examples of similar applications which have been refused or withdrawn, it might be that these projects go against planning policy and will find it very difficult, if not impossible, to obtain approval.

Whether your strategy is to flip or hold property, the main aim of property investing is usually to add as much value as possible. Adding value to a flip will, of course, help you achieve a higher sale price. Adding value to a property you intend to hold will allow you to market the property for a higher rental, allow you to release more equity when you refinance and, ultimately, achieve a higher sale price when you come to sell on. Because I have a background in architecture, my first instinct when I view a property is to look for ways to unlock latent value through changing the layout. In all of my property deals to date, I have carried out some form of alteration to the layout to add value to the property. In all of these cases, it has cost significantly less to carry out the alterations than the subsequent uplift in value achieved. I generally invest following the BRR (Buy, Refurbish, Refinance) Model: Buy : at as low a price as possible Refurbish : as efficiently as possible. This doesn't always mean spending as little as possible. It's about being efficient with your money and always looking for the best ROI. It's better to spend £5000 to add £15000 of value than it is to spend £500 to add £1000. Spending £500 keeps the cost down but spending £5000 sees a better return on your investment. Refinance : to pull as much money back out as possible

When speaking to clients about their extension, I'm often asked the question "how much do you think this will add to the value of my house?" My answer is usually "not as much as it'll cost you to build it". However, I may just have found the best value-for-money home alteration. Bear with me... There is a growing trend for "working from home". In 2019, around 5% of the working population worked mainly from home. During the COVID-19 pandemic, this initially jumped to nearly 50% of the workforce working from home as a result of social distancing measures. This has been forced on the majority and wouldn't be considered a long term solution for most - the inefficiencies of being tucked in the spare room with the ironing pile, scattered across the dining room table with kids crawling between your legs or constantly manoeuvring to avoid the glare on your laptop screen in the conservatory. The solution to all of this is to build a bespoke standalone Garden Study.

If you are considering a standalone Garden Study within the grounds of your house, it's critical to know which approvals you will require. There are 2 different types of approval which may be required: Planning Permission and Building Warrant Approval. Although both are Local Council approvals, they are 2 different entities and need to be considered separately. It may be that one or the other or both are required. Planning Permission takes the principles of the proposed building into consideration in the context of the site. It considers aspects such as over-development of the site, the size of the building, overlooking neighbouring properties and, to a certain extent (i.e. particularly if you are considering a Garden Study in your front garden or a side garden fronting a road), aesthetics. Building Warrant requires you to demonstrate compliance with the Scottish Technical Standards (commonly referred to as Building Regulations) and takes into consideration aspects such as fire safety, structural suitability, thermal performance (insulation levels) if you intend to install a fixed heating system and drainage.

When researching different Garden Studies/Offices/Studios/Rooms/Pods/ Shoffices (shed + office apparently), it's difficult to understand the quality of each one. One of the major variances is insulation. Building regulations aside, if it's somewhere you're going to spend 8 hours a day, 5 days a week (or more), insulation is not something you'll want to compromise on. How do I know how well insulated it is? There are many different types and thicknesses of insulation, all of which have different thermal properties. The way to establish how well-insulated a Garden Room is is to check the U-Value of each element (wall, floor, roof, window and door). Unfortunately, for me, a bullet point saying "fully insulated" doesn't quite cut it. What is a U-Value? The U-Value of an element (wall, floor, roof, window or door) is the rate of heat loss through that element. The lower the U-Value, the slower the rate of heat loss i.e. the better insulated it is. By increasing the thickness or quality of insulation, you lower the U-Value. Why does this matter? Lets look at 2 example constructions: Construction A 90mm thick timber stud wall with mineral wool insulation between the studs. There are various qualities of insulation but, taking an average spec, this gives a U-Value of say 0.3W/m2K. That means that the heat loss through a 6m2 wall is 1.8W/K (Don't worry about what this means in technical terms, just look at it from a comparison point of view.) Construction B A 140mm thick timber kit with 140mm rigid insulation between the studs with an insulated external breather membrane and an insulated internal vapour control layer which gives a U-Value of 0.17W/m2K. The equivalent heat loss through a 6m2 wall is 1.02W/K. This means that there is 45% less heat loss through Construction B compared with Construction A. The variance in specification can have a significant impact on the performance and fit-for-purpose...ness of your home office. A Benchmark for Comparison If you were considering an extension to your home to accommodate your new office, generally, your extension would need to meet the following U-Values: Wall - 0.22W/m2K Floor - 0.18W/m2K Flat roof - 0.18W/m2K Pitched roof - 0.15W/m2K Windows and Doors - 1.6W/m2K Business doesn’t stop during the winter. If I intend to spend 8 hours a day 5-days a week in my Garden Office, I’d prefer it to be more than just a "fully insulated" garden shed. This gives you a benchmark when looking at possible Garden Rooms to establish how well-insulated it is in comparison to your house. This is a very broad brush introduction to U-Values. Please feel free to get in touch if you have any queries about a particular specification you want to explore.