The best laid schemes o' mice an' men

My last entry in this journal, over 10 months ago, said, "Through 2021 I will be retrofitting an 1867 terraced house in Oxford."

Well, that was mighty naive! 2021 has actually been spent trying to get planning permission. 

Warning: do not read on unless you really, really need to know about the planning process.

Although the planning department agreed in January that I didn't have to create a Victorian pastiche at the back of the house, the council's legal department wanted the neighbours I am building with and me to sign an agreement that if one party pulled out the planning permission would be withdrawn. Fair enough - we are filling in what would normally be a light well for each other so if one of us withdrew it would affect the light to the other house.

It took the council four months to draft the deed that we had to sign. Unfortunately it also had to include my neighbours' mortgage-providing bank and they required my neighbour to obtain specialist legal advice but didn't specify an acceptable lawyer. It took my neighbour two months to find one. It took the specialist lawyer two months to advise the bank that everything was OK. At that point we printed off the draft, all signed it and got the bank's seal attached, I delivered it to the Town Hall on 21 September and a junior lawyer there said she would process it. A week later, her boss returned from leave, said we had signed only one copy and on the wrong sort of paper. Her message ended:

I think the best and quickest way forward is for me to prepare a correct version of the Deed (4 copies) on engrossment paper for everyone to sign again. I will now do this and send them to you as soon as I can. There will be 4 copies of the Deed so that everyone signs each copy and everyone therefore will have a completed part of the Deed on completion.

I am sorry that we have to do this but it would have been prudent for you to have checked with me before proceeding as you have done.

Please note that planning permission will not be granted until the Deed had been executed and completed properly.

Two weeks later, on 4 October, the council lawyer foolishly put the quadruplicate deeds on the right sort of paper into the black hole that is Oxford's postal system (https://www.theguardian.com/business/2021/nov/21/royal-mail-is-failing-everyone-but-shareholders). We get weekly deliveries of mail in Oxford and I have inside information that only when the students are recruited for the Christmas post does the backlog that has been building up since January get cleared. We were lucky - it took only four days of first class chaos for the deeds to do the seven-minute bike ride to my letterbox.

One of the signatories was in Portugal and the bank wanted everything, to and fro, to go via the specialist lawyer. On 9 November, the deed, finally signed four times by everyone on the right sort of paper, was once again entrusted to Royal Mail, this time tracked. And for 15 days that's what the tracking system said: 
    9 November, 16:48 Accepted at Post Office.

Two days ago my neighbour checked and reported a miracle: the tracking system said the envelope had been delivered to the Town Hall. He emailed the lawyer, working from home, who went to see and she emailed us and the planning officer to say that everything seemed to be in order. 

Today I looked at the Planning Department webpage:
    Status: Decided
    Decision: Approved
    Decision Issued Date: Thur 26 Nov 2021

I looked again. I took a screenshot. It didn't change. 26 November was yesterday. I wonder when/whether they will inform us. Anyway, I told everyone and invited them all round for a drink at mine this evening.

So now we can try to get quotes and a start date from builders, who I know are quoting 35% more than a year ago and with a three-month lead time.


Through 2022 I will be retrofitting an 1867 terraced house in Oxford.

I wonder on what date next year I will write here, "Well, that was mighty naive!"