J
jcskinner
Guest
I have a question involving planning issues in Belfast that I'd appreciate people's advice on.
I have a large house in Belfast, which is my primary residence (the only house I own), but I spend most of the week in rented accommodation in Dublin as that's where most of my work is.
The house is way too big for me, and I engaged an architect to draw up plans to convert into three apartments, with the intention of keeping one and selling on the other two to family members.
It took the architect the guts of a year to draw up plans and send them in for planning approval, in which time the market has turned as we all know. However, I remained keen to proceed with the redevelopment.
Now, after months of silence from the planning department, we've got a fairly negative response to the plans. The architect and I went to a meeting with the planners to clarify their actual difficulties with the proposed redevelopment, and I was shocked when the meeting descended into a peeing contest between a really rude planner and my architect over who knew the regs best.
Now I'm on the verge of having the plans formally rejected. This is baffling to me because the planners have been incapable of explaining why my plans are unsuitable when literally dozens of similar redevelopments in the same area have been permitted. I'm beginning to suspect some ancient animus between my architect and the planning department.
Now my architect has suggested hiring a professional town planner for their advice on how to resubmit the plans, at a cost of a low four figure sum, which is on top of the significant five figure sum I've already paid him for plans which look like being rejected.
I want to redevelop, but don't want to throw good money after bad. What should I do?
I have a large house in Belfast, which is my primary residence (the only house I own), but I spend most of the week in rented accommodation in Dublin as that's where most of my work is.
The house is way too big for me, and I engaged an architect to draw up plans to convert into three apartments, with the intention of keeping one and selling on the other two to family members.
It took the architect the guts of a year to draw up plans and send them in for planning approval, in which time the market has turned as we all know. However, I remained keen to proceed with the redevelopment.
Now, after months of silence from the planning department, we've got a fairly negative response to the plans. The architect and I went to a meeting with the planners to clarify their actual difficulties with the proposed redevelopment, and I was shocked when the meeting descended into a peeing contest between a really rude planner and my architect over who knew the regs best.
Now I'm on the verge of having the plans formally rejected. This is baffling to me because the planners have been incapable of explaining why my plans are unsuitable when literally dozens of similar redevelopments in the same area have been permitted. I'm beginning to suspect some ancient animus between my architect and the planning department.
Now my architect has suggested hiring a professional town planner for their advice on how to resubmit the plans, at a cost of a low four figure sum, which is on top of the significant five figure sum I've already paid him for plans which look like being rejected.
I want to redevelop, but don't want to throw good money after bad. What should I do?