Building Advice: Should I seek a pre-planning meeting with the council?

Thank you 

Clodagh Sheehy 

Hello Clodagh Thank you for your question. Great to hear you are at the start of the design process for your new home. It must be so exciting. Looking at photos of dream homes online and in magazines for inspiration, dreaming about how your new home will turn out and what life will be like when it is complete. This is indeed a special time.

You ask a great question when you ask about pre-planning. The thing about pre-planning is that it is one of the elements of the design process that isn't essential from the planners’ point of view (in that there is nothing to stop you from lodging for planning permission without doing it) but I certainly advise it to de-risk your planning application and design. So let's look at what pre-planning is and what it involves.

When you are designing a house you need to be cognizant of the prevailing planning legislation, criteria, limitations and guidelines. Outside of engineering items like sewerage and traffic sight distances, in the country the sensitivities tend to be more related to your connection to the local area (did you grow up there, did you go to local primary school, are your parents from the area, farmers sons and daughters etc) whereas in a built-up area it is likely to be more concerned with neighbouring buildings in terms of distance, your ridge height, privacy and maintaining neighbours’ daylight.

The issue with preparing for a planning application is that there are so many boxes to be ticked and all the documentation goes in at once. If there are any significant errors or omissions it can lead to a Further Information Request of a Refusal. A Further Information Request occurs when a planning authority (your County or City Council) deems that the information you have sent in is either incomplete or needs amending and it is often deemed a sign that a planning permission is likely (though this is certainly not always the case). A Refusal occurs when a planning authority deems that you either do not qualify (in a rural setting) or that your house design is contrary to planning legislation/precedent. In either case, you are dealing with either a significant delay of a few months (further information) or you are back to the drawing board (refusal). So how do you de-risk this? This is where pre-planning comes in.

A pre-planning application occurs when you send in your planning documents to the planners for their initial feedback. This feedback is non-committal (in that they are free to change their mind when the full application is made) but it is a start. A positive pre-planning outcome suggests that you are on the right track with your application (but you still need to lodge for full planning permission) whereas a negative outcome shows where the planners have issues with your application and gives you an opportunity to rectify these before you make your full application.

When it comes to deciding when is the optimal time to make a pre-planning application, the answer is it really depends on the project in question and where it is deemed that the sensitivities lie. I have seen planning applications in rural locations where there is a question as to whether the applicant meets the ‘Local Needs’ qualification criteria. In a case like this, it may be necessary to fill out the “local needs’ documentation in draft form and send it to the planners straight away before any design is carried out (as it may be abortive). I have seen projects where we believe that the applicant likely satisfies the local needs criteria but that we have concerns over which field on their farm stands the best chance of obtaining planning permission so we would send in the ‘local needs documentation’ as well as a map showing where the proposed site is located and our justification for proposing this particular site over another field in the farm folio which might be closer to the original farmhouse. Beyond this, it may in fact be more design-related (which could occur in a rural or an urban setting). In this instance, we would advance the plans and elevations to show all heights and dimensions including separations from neighbours etc. We are essentially showing our full hand here to ensure the planners are happy with our proposed detailed design before we make our final lodgement.

So, you can see why we would make a pre-planning application (to de-risk your project and save on costly delays) and you now have a sense of when we would propose to make this informal appreciation (really depend on your project specifics). Would I recommend this? I certainly would unless you were very sure you had an excellent chance of obtaining planning permission first go, otherwise you are in the lap of the gods.

• Kieran McCarthy is a building engineer and director of KMC Homes bespoke A-rated new home builder, serving Cork and Limerick. He is also co-presenter of the RTÉ property show Cheap Irish Homes.
• Follow Kieran on instagram @kierankmc for more home-building information, tips and Q&A advice.
• You can also follow Kieran on the Built Around You Youtube channel and @kierankmc on TikTok