We offer a pre-application advice service for new residential dwellings and commercial development including Class B1, B2, B8, Hotels, Leisure Development and others. Our service includes a meeting and written advice from one our planning officers with advice and input from our technical consultees.
Meetings will be arranged for the 4th week following receipt of the pre-application submission (so allowing a 21-day consultation with relevant internal consultees to expire). Final written comments passed onto the applicant on or before 8 weeks from receipt where proposals can be made valid. Timescales may be varied in agreement with the applicant.
What to include with a pre-application advice submission?
The more information you can provide us as part of your application, the more helpful and specific our advice can be. We encourage you to provide at least some of the following:
- A Location Plan (scaled at 1:1250 or 1:2500)
- A Layout plan of the development
- A full description of the proposed works
- Details of features of the existing site (e.g. buildings, trees, watercourses, levels, photographs)
- Drawings or illustrations which help describe your proposal including size and layout
- Any completed technical surveys (e.g. details around access or the landscape of the site).
Policies/Developer Guides
Before submitting your pre-application advice application, you might find the following documentation helpful when developing your proposals:
The Solihull Local Plan sets out our adopted planning policies and our supplementary planning documents can be found here.
There is now a S38 and S278 Works Highway Adoption Procedures Guidance to Developers which sets out the key stages of Section 38 and Section 278 process.
Our Developers Service Guide provides guidance on the provision of facilities for waste and recycling for new developments and property conversions.
Planning Performance Agreements
A planning performance agreement (PPA) is an optional project management tool that local planning authorities and applicants can use to agree the process for handling a planning application (for example, agreeing timescales, actions, and resources).
PPAs provide a flexible framework that can be particularly useful for determining an efficient, transparent, and collaborative process for large and/or complex proposals.
A PPA is agreed voluntarily between us and the applicant prior to the application being submitted, and should cover pre-application and application stages but can also be extended to cover post-application stage.
If you would like to discuss setting up a PPA please contact the planning team at planning@solihull.gov.uk
Please note that from the 1 April 2024, the council will now apply a small administrative fee of £35.00 for any pre-application fees that are refunded without any work having been undertaken by the case officer. Where the case officer has already commenced work on the pre-application enquiry then it is unlikely the fee will be refunded if requested by the applicant and we will continue to work towards issuing the response.
Exceptional case specific circumstances will always be taken into account though as part of any request for refunds.