[lars64]

I want to build a steel framed shed to house my tractor and all of the implements to stop them rusting away at the side of the field and had thought that I'd finally scraped together enough money. We shouldn't have any issues under permitted development as the holding is 16 acres and there are no other agricultural buildings. I've put the forms etc. into to the local council for the prior notification all filled in correctly, with site plans etc. However they've come back to me saying that they want drawings of the elevations and a floor plan. This is a standard off the shelf agricultural shed with no windows and a big door for the tractor to come in, so I am not even sure what the floor plan would show - just an empty rectangle? I've gone back to the kit supplier and they want £720 for the elevations and floor plan    Apparently a "standard charge". I'm not sure where I can find that from!

My question is - given that this is a bog standard steel frame shed with standard roof and cladding, has anyone come up with a cheaper way to give the local council what they need?

Thanks for any advice or tips.

[sss]

No idea about planning, but I would ask the supplier to provide them free of charge if they want the sale, there must be lots of other suppliers of steel framed sheds.

[shygirl]

we were in this exact situation a few years back. i tried to everything by the book, just for some stalls to milk the cows in. but no, i did scaled drawing etc but they wouldnt accept them unless they were draw by an approved architect off of their list of approved architects.
they wanted me to spend £600 plus on the drawings even though they had all measurements of the building, photo's, exact dimensions of all material etc. 
as we have permitted development i couldnt see the point in spending so much for some council twit to to look at, so in the end we didnt bother.
we are now looking to build the said sheds but i wont be telling the council at all this time round. im only wanting to milk the cow.

[stufe35]

 We have just applied for the same and used an agent to do it.we had to do full planning because we are only ten acres..he has filled in all the forms and done plans elevations etc for £320.

[devonlad]

avoid an "architect" as we used one to draw up our initial plans and then building regs on our recently built extension. he contributed nothing to the design other than an original set of drawings that weren't even close to what we had wanted. in the end I drew them on graph paper and he did them (or his computer did more like|)- £900 - thank you very much and another £900 for the building regs plus 250 for a structural engineer to work out how big one beam needed to be and fees to the council- close on 2500 come the end - bloody rip off when we had designed it and it was within bounds of permitted development all along- i'm all for not allowing unsightly and inappropriate building in beautiful rural areas but its a bloomin rip off!!!!!!!!!!!!!1

[ellied]

I'd take your standard shed requirement to several other providers and see which can do the whole thing, plans included, for the most reasonable price.  If the one you first thought of is only cheap because everything else is an add on cost at overpriced rate, you're better off with a more expensive shed that includes all the necessary paperwork in the cost.  Cut price plus add ons sounds like a cowboy builder equivalent, with cheap price no more than a sales gimmick.

[lars64]

Thanks for all the advice. The planning officer is helpful and when I told him this "standard" price he agreed that I could find photographs of an identical shed and annotate them with metric dimensions and suggested that failing that I get busy with a scale rule and pencil! He says that SHOULD suffice for prior notice (no guarantees until he sees what I come up with).

Anyway, I think I may need to change building kit supplier. Herefordshire is a funny old place, I phoned every local company earlier this year and only 2 could be bothered to give me prices. The one I chose had plenty of local installations, so seemed a good bet. I thought yesterday that given the plans were a lot more than I'd expected (£720!), I'd better double check the price as I got my quote from them in February. I expected maybe a small increase, but they've gone up 25%! Apparently some of the price increase is due to all steel framed buildings needing a "CE mark" from the 1st of July by some new law and every building individually needing a structural engineers calculations (at nearly £1200 in my case). Sounds a bit fishy to me - why on earth do you need individual calculations for a bog standard 60x30x12 metal shed? You'd be doing the same thing over and over and over again.

So, I've let my fingers do the walking and phoned a few of the larger companies outside the area. The CE thing is apparently correct (the companies I spoke to have it now, it doesn't seem to be a big deal to them). I've got two prices, with much better lead times, and guess what? 20% LESS than the local Hereford bunch for exactly the same specification. Elevation and floor plans are a couple of hundred quid if I need them and one company will refund that against the order when that's placed.

It seems that it doesn't always pay to buy local!

[Bramblecot]

We bought our barn as a kit from MVF and they were very helpful. 
For the planning I did all the drawings myself as I got completely ripped off by the architect for the house extension.  I just did a simple plan and elevation with all the measurements written in by hand.  It was nothing fancy and did not look very pretty but the planning officer said it was perfectly adequate.  Save yourself some money

[pigalicious]

I also did my own drawings, they were not pretty, but as long as they include metric dimensions and a note of external materials ie; steel box profile brown, or corrugated cement fibre.

The planning accepted this without issue, and it was almost free.

[sandalfarm]

We got our shed from wareings and they were helpful at every stage