Planning Application consent (EWI etc) Manchester City Council

Hey all,

Paul and I are embarking in our final push of the house retrofit journey.

This will involve EWI at the front and back - we are a mid 3storey terrace. We’ve contacted the Manchester City Council department (we live in M19) to ask whether EWI will require a planning application or whether it falls under permitted development. The house is a mix of brick (very minimal) and white timber tongue&groove panelling underneath the windows. Our home is a late 1960s terrace.

Unhelpfully the response we received is completely vague. Before I go to the effort and expense of paying pre-app consultation (if they even offer it anymore), has anyone else who also falls within Manchester City Council, got any experience to share on this?

We are planning on PV installation but the pitches of our roof are low enough that you won’t be able to see the panels from the road side.

Thanks!
Lorenza

PS - I searched the forum if this topic had been discussed elsewhere but couldn’t find something directly related/useful to our situation.

Hi Lorenza,

Welcome to the forum.

My experience of such preliminary enquiries, though not in Manchester, is that they are handled by junior staff that have a simplistic questionnaire to complete before they give an answer. A small percentile get a yes, the same get a no and everyone else has to pay a fortune for someone who knows what they are doing to look at the issue.

If through contacts you know of such a person you could start again, addressing your enquiry to them.

People Powered Retrofit managed to get clarity over EWI on side walls in Chorlton recently. Might be worth having a word with them.

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Morning both, thank you very much for your replies. Tim I’ll try and find out who our area planning officer is, good suggestions.

Sian - we are part of PPR already but they weren’t able to really help or get clarity, I think they’re just absolutely snowed under at the moment.

I think most planners would regard EWI as ‘materially affecting the external appearance of the building’ so requires planning permission. We got permission for our EWI after some debate. The case officer thought as the house was originally brick we should use brick slips or a brick coloured render. We mocked up some options and convinced him that cream silicone render would look better.

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Several of the houses in my street are painted white or cream, so when I was asked to illustrate how my house would look with white render I sent them photos of my street. They still refused.

I’m tempted to paint my house white and sneak in EWI a couple of years later. With copious photos of before and after to illustrate that the appearance is more or less the same.

It’s a shame Blowerproof white isn’t weatherproof and that Passive Purple’s (Intelligent Membranes) weatherproof paint isn’t white. Anyone know of a white paint on airtightness membrane that is weatherproof?

Hey all! I can’t believe a year has passed already since my post. But I just wanted to give an update that in the end we went for planning approval, as it was required by our Council (Manchester) and we received approval after 8 weeks.

It seems excessive for a Council to still require such convoluted process when facilitating householders to do energy efficiency works is to be supported, but at least we got planning.

We are now looking for installers of EWI: wood fibre with render. Just finding contractors willing to quote for the job seems an arduous enough as it is!

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