Ensure eSignature Lawfulness for Planning in United Kingdom

How to eSign a document: e-signature lawfulness for Planning in United Kingdom

if you're going to use the four-year rule make sure you have all of your information up front and just prove without doubt to the council that what you're saying is true because it's really really important otherwise like i said you're going to get in hot water when people make alterations to their house or changes of use to residential or any other alterations they look to the four-year rule to rectify the situation from a planning point of view it's a well-used way of rectifying changes to your house that you haven't already got planning permission for so this video is going to walk through the four-year rule explain what it is and then go through best bits of evidence that you can submit to make sure that when you approach the council looking to use the four-year rule then you've got the best information possible so i've been a planning officer in my career and i've and i've seen the four-year rule used over and over again and i've seen people make big mistakes with it and i've also seen people that have just sailed through so what is the four-year rule the four-year rule is area of planning where if you make changes to a house or if you change of change the use of anything to residential then you benefit from what's called the four-year rule which is a a way of you demonstrating to the council that what you've done to your property or the change of use that you've made was done without doubt more more than four years ago so the key to all of this though is that when you use the four-year rule the onus is on the applicant so if you're approaching the council then the every bit of evidence is on you to provide if if you provide evidence and the council finds something to the country then you could be refused so you want to basically cover every single area that could possibly be used to demonstrate that your what you're saying is true and this video is going to walk you through that so now let's walk through each bit of evidence that you can submit to make sure that your application using the four-year rule just sails through with no problem the first and most important piece of information or evidence is a statutory declaration and this is essentially a statement from you asserting that something's true and more often than not they're signed in the presence of a solicitor to kind of to formalize them now these can be declarations on behalf of you but also on from other people that are relevant to the to the application you're making so as an applicant you can say i believe that my rear extension was built more than four years ago or my change of use happened more than to residential more than four years ago and you sign it to you believe it to be true then in all the other evidence that we're going to talk about later you can have a statutory declaration from each of those people so if you're if you've appointed a contractor you can ask them to write a quick statement to say i i was appointed on this date i started work on this date i completed work on this date and then it needs to then match up with um with the evidence you submit again signed by solicitor and then if you're doing things like uh change of use to residential let's say if you let's say if you divided a house up into flats but never got permission for it you will need uh statutory declarations or you you don't have to but it was very helpful to have statutory declarations from each of the tenants which is key to showing a kind of more than four year period so if you did the works five years ago they were completed and then you started letting them out it's very compelling evidence for you to have a statutory declaration from each of those tenants which is then supported later on by the contracts that they signed me which would allow them to stay there so statutory declarations are a really important first piece of information and they're kind of the front runner which is then backed up by all the other information that we're gonna talk about next the second bit of evidence is plans and evidence of completion of the work so this again this is true of changes of use and extension so if you've made alterations to your house say let's say a rear extension then obviously you need to submit plans to show that to be true so plans that are accurate so if anyone does a site visit they stand up to what you're what you're showing and then the key bit because obviously we're talking about the four year rule here so the key bit is to demonstrate any evidence of that work taking place and any evidence that you dated evidence that you have that supports that so the key bit to this is things like before and after photos so and dated so that's just one piece but then also any contractor that you've appointed for the work you'll need emails to show when they're appointed when did they start and then a kind of signed agreement between you and the contractor that's dated to say that more than four years ago we started work on this and we were appointed to do this work then you can do photos during the works to show how it was going on and how it eventually meets up with the the what you're what you're applying for then and then a very important piece is another a certificate of completion from basically when the contractor hands it back over to you so you need something signed that confirms what has been done and when it was finished and then that stacks up with the photos you have it back and adds on to your statutory declaration so there you have one good really good piece of evidence next bit of information and this is really kind of most useful for when you're demonstrating that something has been changed to residential um not so much for extension so if you're so at the beginning of the video we talked about statutory declarations from each of your tenants to show that you've let the let the flats or the house for more than four years so it's it's fine having that declaration but then you need to back it up with something uh and i've spoken about a uh their contracts and their asts already but the other really important information is their utility utility bills and council tax records so council tax records are a great start because they are essentially showing look we're originally already registered in your council as having all these flats so you just go to the council tax records website and it will show what band they're in and if you can then print off that information or scan that information and put it in with your application it's very compelling again this all needs to stack up if anything if anything doesn't match up with what you're saying then that's a kind of red flag to the officer so yeah council tax records really really key so that shows that this house was divided into four flats more than four years ago this is when the council tax records started and this this um correlates with when the work was completed and when i when i let them out the other one is utility bills so electric water and gas bills showing that this tenant started paying bills with this provider on this date for this long and then hopefully you should have a clear breakdown that this tenant paid these bills at this during this contract and then the next contract and so on and so forth up until the point that you're applying so those are really really compelling evidence so if you've got a statutory declaration saying i've let them out for five years these are all the tenants saying that um saying that uh saying that they live there for more than five years and then if you've got the utility bills to back it up the tax records to back it up then that's really really um that's really compelling evidence another piece of information that i've touched on already is the tenancy records so if all of your tenants have been there for so long make sure you submit details of each tenancy to the council which is then obviously backed up by everything i've said already the other important thing you can add is their voting records so once someone moves in and they want to vote in a local election they will have records of when of when that of that happening so you can search on the council's website find that and again if this all correlates then you're in a really really strong position last one is a mortgage valuation report so if you divided the house up uh or a house or anything up into flats and you want to prove that you you've done you've done that but if you borrowed money up against it or if you needed a survey done or anything like that then a valuation report can be done and that essentially explains or will explain what the property was when they went to value it so if they if the flat was valued for x amount in their report they will say upper floor flat um i've attended on this date and this is how much it's worth blah blah so it's just a very compelling piece of information that basically shows that someone went on site five years ago they assessed the they assessed the property and they believed it to be what you're what you're applying for so again it's very very strong piece of information and all of these all of these things that we've talked about here are just if you have all of these in line then really there's no other way that the council can prove otherwise because really you've got to prove without doubt that what you're saying is true um and if you cover up any every bit of information that i've just listed here then you're in a really strong position but because essentially the cap that the officer is going to do the same thing they're going to search for these things and if they find anything that doesn't show what you're proving what you're demonstrating then it's a razor red flag and you could be refused now the important thing to know is that if you're refused there's no right of appeal the only way that you can appeal is to the high court and that is the only way that that works is if you are trying to demonstrate that the council didn't make a decision in line with the legislation so it's not it's not like you go to the inspector and you argue your case like you do with a normal planning application this is a matter of law if you're if you're appealing that so this is why it's really really key and really important to show from the very first moment that you approach the council that everything you are showing is in place don't let the officer find out any otherwise because if you get refused do you need to go to the high court if you want to appeal you'll probably get served an enforcement notice and the only way to sort that out is to rectify it from a planning point of view which means that you may need to apply now the issue with that is that a lot of people use the four-year rule sometimes to show that yes i've got flats but sometimes they're not up to standard if they're applying for planning permissions so if you get an enforcement notice saying that what you've done is unlawful you need to rectify it but you won't necessarily get planning permission for what you've got you have you'll have to apply for something that may be better which could cost you a lot of money to rectify so if you're going to use the four-year rule make sure you have all of your information up front and just prove without doubt to the council that what you're saying is true because it's really really important otherwise like i said you're gonna get in hot water and no one wants that so that wraps it up and just for clarity this was a video about the four-year rule which only relates to residential so you can submit all this evidence for what's called a certificate of lawfulness and you can do that for all other types of buildings but for for everything else for all the kind of commercial uses or commercial changes of use you're talking about 10 years that's the timeline that you need to demonstrate so it's a much more onerous application i can do a video on that as well if you want me to so just leave a comment in the comments below but yeah so this was just about residential and hopefully this helps you because if you have all this information up front before going to the council then you're in a great position and um yeah hopefully it helps you out so if there's anything else that i've missed that some sometimes there's lots of other information that you could submit that's really helpful to your case um that kind of goes outside of what i spoke about so if you have evidence if you have an example of what you submitted for your for your case um put it in the comments below so that everyone can kind of have a look and benefit and if there's anything else related to a certificate of lawfulness that you want me to uh to do a video on i'm happy to do that or just expand on the four-year rule i'm happy to do that as well do that as well so leave a comment like the video for me and i will see you on the next video you