Applying for Planning Permission

Hi,

I'm looking at moving down the country with my wife to build on my home farm but am having difficulty getting planning permission.
Before we even get near drawing up plans, I've to try and sort out water and percolation on the site - we dug the percolation holes and they failed. We were then told if the water samples passed certain quality tests, we could put in a water treatment system - but these tests have now failed.

Anyone any suggestions as to what we can do next????

what county??

did a member of the council do the test or did you have to engage an external agent?

the general requirement in most countys is 1/2 acre for rural dwellings, if the test fail one a 1/2 acre site you can always go onto the next 1/2 acre and test there; and so on.....

in my experiences percolation tests are quite a lottery.... ive seen two holes 15 yards apart, one fail for going too fast and the other for going too slow.... and when the council get the average of both holes the test passes....

did your holes fail for going too fats or too slow... results that are too fast can be engineered with imported soild in a new percolation area...

how did the tests fail.. too fast or too slow.. was the water table high?? is there mottling???

Is the option of imported soil for a raised bed percolation area not a solution to your problem. There are lots of counties where this is the only option as the type of soil locally is not suitable for percolation.

yours

Secman

The percolation tests failed becasue the water was going too slow.

Our next option was to put in a raised percolation bed but we needed the water to drain off this using a nearby stream - the chemical tests on this is what failed

the whole idea of a raised bed percolation area is to treat the foul discharge before it reaches the slow percolation ground type. now i may be wrong, and different councils have different policies... but generally you are allowed discharge to ground... theres no way every situation can discharge to a watersource... therefore using the stream to discharge too is not a necessity.....
that is unless the percolation test results were a complete failure and there was no percolation at all.......

other options include moving to another site...