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Do I Need Planning Permission?
Good evening all! It seems I haven't actually written much of late so here's a little tidbit of the stuff that has been keeping me busy for the past few months.
First of all there was the quick revamp of Blackstar Search, but mainly I have been putting together a new planning website called simply Do I Need Planning Permission? for Orchard Planning Solutions.
The idea of Do I Need Planning Permission? is to provide a comprehensive set of information about when you do and do not need planning permission and whether building regulations apply to your particular project on your home. In addition there is an interactve forum and blog to keep people joining in, plus a feature for calculating the expected cost of an extension based on its size, and another for calculating the number of roles of wallpaper you need to paper a room.
As I've been writing software to help large companies and local authorities manage the processes invoved with the CDM regulations for larger projects for nearly 14 years now, it's been interesting to pick up the details of what is required for smaller home based projects too.
This website has involved some fun javascript for the calculators, but it has also given me the excuse to finally build the online Forum software that I've been meaning to do for a couple of years. This has now been intergrated into both the Do I Need Planning Permission? and Eaton Bray websites. On the blog side it has also forced me to convert the blog backend to ASP.Net with SQL stored procedures rather than the bulky ASP/ADO code that it was originally based on; at one point with a slowish internet connection the old code was taking minutes to publish a single post and as soon as the switch was made, that became no more than one second.... I knew there would be a big performance boost, but that was spectacular!
By Theo Gray on February 26, 2009 | Permalink | Comment
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May 12, 2009
,Mark says:Hi Theo,
I am impressed by the diverse projects you are currently involved with. I have had a quick look at the do i need planning permission website and I am extremely impressed by it and its contents. I have no hesitation in recommending you to any friends who may wish create their own site.
Well done!
Mark