One of the historic Royal palaces, in the shape of Kensington Palace, is set for some major renovations ahead of the Duke and Duchess of Cambridge making it their family home. It is been reported that officials from Historic Royal Palaces have made an application to Kensington and Chelsea Council for some major changes. This was fully expected but the planning application is controversial to say the least.

Want somewhere to stash the lawn mower? Or a place to retreat to with a good book? Sheds are versatile buildings, but there might be some hoops you need to jump through before installing one in your garden.

The national home of planning and building regulations outlines on their website the factors you have to consider before putting up a potting shed.

Chelsea have been given the green light to build a new 60,000-seater stadium at Stamford Bridge after winning planning approval for the project.
The club’s hopes of redeveloping their current home received a boost on Wednesday evening when Hammersmith and Fulham Council’s planning and development control committee voted unanimously in favour of the scheme.

A statement on the club’s official website,

Heritage campaigners have called for a public inquiry into Westminster council’s handling of the planning application for the “Paddington Cube” office block.

The proposed £775 million development next to the railway station was given the green light by councillors earlier this month.

But Henrietta Billings, director of the SAVE Britain’s Heritage group said objections from Historic England and the London Ambulance Service had been “brushed aside” at the meeting of the planning committee that granted the consent.

London Stansted Airport has unveiled plans for a new £130 million Arrivals build it claims will “significantly improve the passenger experience”.

The building is the latest phase in the multi-million pound transformation programme by MAG to support future growth at the airport and attract new passengers and airlines.

Stansted is currently the busiest single terminal airport in the UK with up to 5,000 departing passengers alone passing through its doors every hour at peak times.

Scrooge council chiefs have threatened to fine a woman £2,500 for flying a flag featuring SANTA and his reindeer – because it breaches ADVERTISING laws.

Janis Patterson, 64, hoisted up the colourful festive flag which shows Father Christmas and his reindeers flying in front of a moon.

But the mum-of-two was stunned when Broxtowe Borough Council threatened her with prosecution for “the unauthorised display of advertisements”.

Plans to build 12 flats near the homes of the residents were rejected when they lodged their objections with the local council.

Plans to build 12 flats near the homes of the residents were rejected when they lodged their objections with the local council.
But the house builder, Raith Developments, has now sent a bill for lost profit to the nine residents in the village of Thornton,

It’s enough to make the typical Islington resident splutter over their breakfast muesli, or perhaps feel too nervous to drive their oh-so-eco-friendly Toyota Prius – but it appears the local authority feels there may be too many estate agents in the borough.

The Islington Tribune reports that a planning direction given by Islington Council’s executive committee has removed the permitted development rights which until now allowed traditional shops –

Plans to double the size of Brent Cross Shopping Centre in a £1.4billion makeover have been revealed by its owners.

Under the proposals by Hammerson and Standard Life Investments a new cinema and hotel will be incorporated within the shopping centre which will also boast more than 200 retailers.

The upper floor of the centre will host 40 new restaurants with the addition of a market level containing food stalls and producers.

Sir James Dyson is in trouble with the council after adding a luxury swimming pool to his £20 million mansion without planning permission.

The inventor of the bagless vacuum cleaner range and Airblade hand dryer, who is worth £5 billion, is thought to have spent around £1 million on a basement swimming pool that may now have to be ripped out if he is not granted retrospective listed building consent.

New Victoria, a £185m regeneration project which will will be located in Manchester city centre, has received planning permission.

Muse Developments, the developer and urban regeneration specialist, in partnership with Network Rail, has been given consent by Manchester City Council’s planning committee to create the £185m mixed-use development on the 2.5-acre site on Corporation Street.

The project will see the creation of three new buildings: a 150,000 sq ft,

A MAN who demolished a 200-year-old listed cottage in Thornton-in-Craven without planning permission could be facing a prison sentence.

David Eckersall, 55, admitted the demolition of grade two listed Nutter Cote Farm at Skipton Magistrates’ Court on Friday and will be sentenced in nine weeks time.

Eckersall, who was allowed unconditional bail, will learn his fate following an all options report,

A key legacy of the London Olympics has begun to take shape as 20,000 new homes are given planning permission in boroughs around the site of the 2012 Games.

Government figures say that developers are on course to meet a target of 24,000 new properties in east London at sites where regeneration was triggered by the Olympics.

Housing and planning minister Gavin Barwell said more than a third will be classed as affordable and many are due to be built on former wasteland that was cleaned up.

Ealing Council have begun the process of formal enforcement action against the ‘gazebo’ outside Melody Cafe on Bedford Corner.

Local Councillors and the Bedford Park Society have been informed about the move which came after the owner failed to submit a planning application by the deadline set by the Council planning department.

After a site visit on 21 July,

A grandmother who spent her life savings on an extension has been told she has to tear down the build because it is ‘out of character’ for the local area.
Nicola Graham-O’Connor, 49, spent £11,000 adding pillars, railings and a canopy to the front of her semi-detached home in Quinton, Birmingham.
The homeowner claims she informed the council of her plans before embarking on the build and was told she did not need planning permission.

The new planning application to build a new cinema in the centre of Chiswick has been submitted raising hopes that films could be shown there as early as next year.

The cinema remain the same size as the original applicationwith five screens but approval was also being sought for three two-bedroom flats, “to make better use of the site”.

George Orwell has won planning permission to return – as a lifesize bronze statue – to the BBC, which he left on bad terms in 1943 snarling that his work there as a talks producer “was wasting my own time and the public money on doing work that produces no result”.

This time he won’t cost the public a penny: all the money for the first public statue honouring the author of Nineteen Eighty-Four and Animal Farm has been raised from private donors,

London City Airport has been given planning permission from the UK government for the expansion of the terminal, which will increase annual capacity to 6.5 million passengers.

The expansion plans come as part of the City Airport Development Programme – a £344 million project to enhance the airport to cater for increasing passenger traffic. Plans are in place to build seven new aircraft stands and a parallel taxiway,

CROYDON’s £1.4bn Westfield/Hammerson development will be even bigger than first planned, with hundreds more homes and an IMAX cinema.

There will also be a new flagship Marks and Spencer store to replace the current M&S in North End, and three floors of shops in the shopping centre.

The updated plans have been announced ahead of a planning committee meeting to discuss the changes on April 28,

Architect to revamp 1950s modernist building

Orms has won planning permission for a refurbishment of a 1950s building on the corner of Oxford Street and Newman Street in London’s West End.

The eastern end of Oxford Street is currently the focus of major construction projects, most involving demolition or retention of just a facade.

The refurbishment of Oxford House will remove an underused car park and replace it with a new office entrance and restaurant.

Over 200 people attended a public meeting on Wednesday night at St Michael and All Angels Church which heard that the current application for the 32-storey Chiswick Curve is currently on hold. Discussions are continuing between the developers and Hounslow Council on the planning application.

Leader of the Council Steve Curran said that Hounslow Council is looking at the whole of the Golden Mile and Chiswick roundabout area (Great West Corridor Plan) and that the Chiswick Curve site cannot be considered in isolation.

Furious neighbours who live opposite the £28million mansion at the centre of London’s longest running mega-basement dispute have branded the ‘gaping 30ft chasm’ left by its fraudster owner a ‘plague on our lives’.

The Grade II listed townhouse was snapped up by conman Achilleas Kallakis, who was later convicted and jailed for seven years.

In 2005 he submitted a planning application to install a swimming pool ,

NEIGHBOURS have rallied around a woman told by the Town Hall that she has broken planning rules by painting a property in a picturesque Belsize Park street… pink.

Camden Council said it had been made aware of the choice of colour and had begun an “enforcement investigation”.

The case has now been handed to planning officials after Su Rose applied for retrospective consent for the pinky paint job,

Kensington and Chelsea now has the toughest basement development policy in the country, the council has claimed.

The Royal borough, which has seen a massive increase in properties converting basements into extra living space , has new powers ensuring that all such developments must receive planning permission.

It comes as Queen guitarist Brian May said he would leave Kensington because the number of mega basement developments had meant staying there was ‘a living hell’ .

SUSSEX’S tallest building is set to get a boost to make it the tallest of its kind outside of London.

British Airways i360 bosses have submitted a planning application to add an 11.45 metre spire to the 162 metre tower to make it the tallest UK observation tower outside London.

If the addition is approved, the Brighton monument will tower above the Spinnaker Tower in Portsmouth which is 170 metres tall and pull further away from the 158 metre Blackpool Tower.

Local councils are using drones to fly over homes to check planning applications, it emerged today.
A dozen local authorities admitted to using or hiring drones after hundreds were asked via Freedom of Information laws.
Civil rights activists accused town halls of making unfair intrusions on people’s lives while the Information Commissioner warned any use of drones would have to be ‘necessary and proportionate’.

A STREET food market a few steps from the Town Hall operated without council planning permission for more than a year before officials realised and moved to shut it down.

Now Network Rail are asking Camden to allow the Real Food Market to return to the new open space outside King’s Cross station.

The application has left planners weighing up support from traders and fans of the market,

Jean Nouvel’s “tours Duo” could have its planning permission revoked as the French organization “Monts 14″ takes the city to court this week in an effort to stop construction before it starts.

Rendering of the Duo Towers.
Photo: courtesy Ateliers Jean Nouvel.

The group “Monts 14″ (fourteen mountains) filed a new appeal with the administrative court in Paris,against the construction of Nouvel’s Duo towers,

Councils are supposed to determine all non-major planning applications within eight weeks, but to speed this process up further, the Government is considering a proposal to allow applications to be processed by an “approved provider”, which might mean the job can get done more quickly.

Legislation could be in place before the summer, though pilot schemes will be set up at first to test the system.

The clampdown on so-called ‘beds in sheds’ across Hounslow has continued with the demolition of three more “illegally-let” outbuildings.

Two sheds in Strafford Road, Hounslow, and one in Springwell Road, Heston , were torn down by their owners on the orders of Hounslow Council .

The council’s housing enforcement team first visited the two outbuildings at the rear of homes in Strafford Road in November 2014,

Jack Wilshere, the Arsenal and England footballer, has won a planning battle to keep 18ft-high nets in his back garden after neighbours complained that they were a “monstrosity”.

The 24-year-old midfielder, who is currently not playing following surgery for a fractured fibula, faced having to tear down the nets in his garden in Harpenden, Hertfordshire, after a complaint from neighbours.

An unauthorised outhouse with a concealed entrance constructed at the back of a residential property in west London – one of the so-called ‘beds in sheds’ properties – has been demolished by a local council.

The detached outhouse at the rear of the house in London NW10, was removed by Ealing council’s demolition contractor after the owner failed to comply with an enforcement notice requiring them to remove the illegal dwelling.

West Ham have submitted a planning application for a huge digital HD ‘wrap solution’ for the outside of their new home at the Olympic Stadium.

The Hammers are leaving Upton Park for Stratford this summer and if their application is successful fans arriving at their games will be treated to a unique prospect. They will be able to watch HD video clips of the Hammers on the exterior of the ground on 83m by 12m giant digital screens that will ‘respond to different brightness settings’ whether the game is taking place in the afternoon or evening.

A FILM director had to tear down the top of her son’s treehouse after neighbours moaned it breached their human rights. The film director had a 14ft structure built for her four-year-old without realising she needed planning permission.
Residents say kids climbing a ladder to its slide can see into bedrooms. But others said children should be free to play outside at the £5million mansion.

A FARMER who built his dream “castle” without planning permission is finally tearing it down – after a nine-year legal war.

Robert Fidler, 67, discretely built the mock-Tudor home by hiding it behind hay bales and tarpaulin.

The dad-of-six defied court orders and lodged legal appeals in the battle with the council, which wanted the property to be destructed because he didn’t ask for planning permission.

A three-bedroom house built illegally in a conservation area has been demolished by a council following a 14-year legal battle.

The chalet-style timber bungalow was originally built in 2002 without planning permission in Hollow Street, Chislet, Kent, and since then the owner has replaced it with a brick structure, extended it and added three caravans to the site.

More than 900 homes are set to be built on the Hounslow civic centre site beside Lampton Park, after plans to move the council’s HQ were approved

A huge new housing development beside a park in Hounslow must not be allowed to prevent festivals taking place, a councillor has warned.

Hounslow’s civic centre will be demolished and replaced by up to 940 homes beside Lampton Park,

Protecting London’s vibrant commercial heartland and ensuring it can remain a key driver of the UK economy for decades to come is the focus of major new planning guidance published by the Mayor of London, Boris Johnson MP.
The Mayor of London has published major new planning guidance aimed at protecting the city’s vibrant commercial heart which is a key driver of the UK economy.

Property Alliance Group’s application for a high-rise residential scheme at the corner of Store Street and Millbank Street near to Manchester’s Piccadilly station was given approval at the planning committee meeting.

Known as Oxygen, the project has been designed by 5plus Architects. The scheme includes 345 apartments and 12 townhouses, alongside leisure facilities and rooftop gardens.

The spaces behind the iconic illuminated signs of London’s Piccadilly Circus are set to be occupied for the first time since the 1950s, as part of a renovation by Fletcher Priest Architects that includes a huge rooftop extension.

Fletcher Priest received planning permission earlier this month to transform the various buildings that make up the Piccadilly Lights complex into offices,

Plans to bring the long-awaited 12,000-capacity arena to Bristol have hit a stumbling block after councillors voted to defer their decision over planning permission.

The proposals were sent back to council planners amid concerns raised about parking, cycle spaces, coach drop-offs and park & ride at a four-hour meeting on Tuesday afternoon.

The move is likely to push back the early-2018 opening date for the £92 million venue and cost the council hundreds of thousands of pounds.

Planning consent has been granted for £1bn worth of developments at Manchester Airport.

The scheme is a series of 60 improvements to put in place state-of-the-art facilities for passengers.

It will include the expansion of Terminal 2 and an enlarged security hall with the latest technology for screening passengers.

There will also be new stands and piers,

Residents in one of Kensington’s most exclusive streets are in a bizarre row with town hall chiefs over a 60ft bird net installed to prevent them from being plagued by pigeons.

A retired judge and former MI6 officer are among neighbours who have already spent more than £10,000 battling Kensington and Chelsea Council’s demand that they rip down the protective netting.

Westminster Council is likely to approve plans for the redevelopment of New Scotland Yard despite a flurry of objections

Westminster Council is recommending planning permission for the redevelopment of New Scotland Yard, despite criticsim over the scale of the scheme.

Critics include Historic England, which has warned harm is likely to be caused to designated heritage assets by BL Developments’ Ten Broadway scheme.

The architects behind a new Google building in London have been given planning permission to start building a new 11-storey property.

Mossessian Architecture, which is designing the futuristic “S2” building in King’s Cross for Google, told Business Insider that planning permission was granted by Camden Council on Thursday.

The 180,000 square foot office block has a large roof terrace on level 11,

Jaguar Land Rover has submitted a joint outline planning application with Coventry City Council to create a technology park on a 60-acre site at Whitley which would create thousands of jobs.

New Jaguar Land Rover development in Coventry

Dubbed ‘Whitley South’, the scheme south of the A45 by Coventry Airport is at the heart of JLR’s ambitious expansion plans and represents a multi-million pound investment in the city.

Artist Damien Hirst has won a planning battle to install a swimming pool and yoga room in the mega-basement of his £40million home.
The 50-year-old, who is Britain’s richest living artist with a wealth of more than £200million, bought the fixer-upper in 2014 and has set about transforming it into one of London’s finest private homes.
It included plans for one of the capital’s most lavish basements,

COUNCIL charges are threatening to strangle a one-woman business providing morning coffee for Hungerford commuters.

Town mayor Martin Crane warned that demands by West Berkshire Council for Rebecca Sheinman, of Carpuccino, to fork out £1,200 for a street traders’ licence could kill off a “valuable asset to the town”.
Ms Sheinman said this week that council chiefs warned she may need planning permission,

Communities secretary Greg Clark has announced that he will consult on whether to reward good performance by certain council planning teams with the opportunity to increase their planning application fees.

Addressing parliament last week, Clark said “well-performing councils” might be allowed to “increase their fees in line with inflation at the most, provided that the revenue reduces the cross-subsidy the planning function currently gets from other council tax payers”.

Developer Hammerson has put back until next year the construction start on its £1bn scheme to redevelop Croydon’s Whitgift shopping centre.

Hammerson is in ongoing talks with anchor tenants for the new shopping centre

The project is one of three major schemes Hammerson plans to start in 2017 with a combined construction cost of up to £1.4bn.

When millions of extra people move to a mostly low-rise city that is surrounded by a “greenbelt” where development is strictly limited, the obvious way to build is up.

But a series of well-known people from the sculptor Antony Gormley to the philosopher Alain de Botton have joined a campaign against the sprouting of more than 250 towers on London’s skyline and some developers are being forced back to the drawing board.

A man has created London’s smallest library – in a phone box in Lewisham.

The disused red K2 model was bought for just £1 from British Telecom on behalf of the Brockley Society.
And now the project is going from strength to strength, with scores of people borrowing from it every day.

Mr Handley,

A tumbledown Victorian villa with no planning permission has gone on the market for an eye-watering £22.5 million.
The ten-bedroom Kenmore House, which has vegetation growing through its boarded-up windows, is even described as “dilapidated” by the estate agents.

But given its prime location in the exclusive Bishops Avenue in Hampstead, they are confident of finding a buyer keen to snap up the 1.7-acre plot.

London is one of the largest data center hubs in the world. Data centers in London account for more than a million square meters of white space and require more than 1 GW of power.

Much of the city’s success in this industry is due to its status as a major center of and finance. One in every five of Europe’s largest 500 companies is headquartered in London,