Buying a house on the water comes with obligations most people never hear about until something goes wrong. Some are planning matters. Some are environmental. One of them makes you legally responsible for safety on your own building site.
Here is the whole picture, and what we can take off your hands.
Most people find out about all this in the same way. They buy somewhere lovely on the river, and a year or two later someone points out that their quay heading has had it. They ring round for quotes, and the quotes come back very different from each other, and nobody has explained why.
The reason is usually that some contractors are pricing the work and others are pricing the work plus everything that legally has to sit around it.
There is no need to be daunted by any of this. Most of it is straightforward once someone lays it out.
Do you need planning permission?
The Broads Authority is the planning authority for the Broads, and quay heading counts as an engineering operation, so the starting point is that it needs planning permission.
There is one important exception. The Authority treats like-for-like replacement as maintenance, which does not need permission. To qualify, the work has to meet all four of these:
- Under 25 metres in length
- The same materials as what is being replaced
- On the same alignment as the original
- At the same height and depth as the original
Miss any one and it stops being maintenance and becomes development, which needs permission.
That catches more jobs than people expect. Replacing tired timber with plastic, because you would rather not do this again in fifteen years, is a change of material, so it needs permission even on a short run. Setting the new quay heading in front of the old rather than taking the old one out first, which is a common way of doing it, changes the alignment, so that needs permission too.
The Authority runs a free pre-application advice service and they are helpful. If you are unsure where your job falls, that is the call to make. We are happy to make it with you.
Do you need a works licence?
Separate from planning, and issued by the Broads Authority in its other role as the navigation authority.
You need one if plant or machinery will be working on the navigable river, including simply moored alongside while the work goes on. Most quay heading jobs on a main river need one.
The process is straightforward. The Authority wants to know where the site is, what you are doing, how long you will be there and what effect it will have on navigation. They come back with conditions, usually about signage and timing.
One thing worth knowing: a works licence does not cover you with the Environment Agency. That is a separate permission and the Authority's own paperwork says so.
Do you need a flood risk activity permit?
This is the one most people have never heard of, and the one that causes the most trouble.
A flood risk activity permit, usually shortened to FRAP, is issued by the Environment Agency for work in, under, over or near a main river or flood defence. It exists to make sure the work does not change how water flows or how a flood defence performs. It is a legal requirement under the Environmental Permitting Regulations 2016.
The responsibility for holding the permit sits with you as the landowner, not with your contractor.
A permit cannot be granted once the work is done. There is no retrospective fix. If it should have been permitted and it was not, that is a problem that does not go away.
There are three routes:
- Register an exemption. Free, but the work has to fit one of the published exempt activities exactly.
- A standard rules permit. Cheaper and quicker, but the work must fit the published rules in full.
- A bespoke permit. For anything that does not fit the above. Around two months to determine.
Charges are set nationally by the Environment Agency and revised each April.
Most contractors will tell you that you need one and that it is your problem. Some will not mention it at all.
We think that is the wrong way round. It is your legal exposure, not ours, and leaving you to work out the Environment Agency's permitting system alone is not much of a service. We will prepare and submit the application for you.
Ecology and protected sites
When a planning application goes in, the Authority puts it in front of its own ecologists as well as its heritage team. They check what is near your site: sites of special scientific interest, protected species, sensitive habitats.
Most of the time the answer is that the work is minor enough not to matter. Sometimes they will ask for a preliminary ecological appraisal first, which is a survey giving an overview of the site so they can decide whether anything further is needed. Occasionally they will want a pollution prevention plan setting out how a spill would be dealt with.
This is not obstruction for its own sake. The Broads is a protected wetland and the reason it is worth living beside is the same reason it is protected.
We work with MHE, an independent ecological consultancy run by two qualified conservationists, one specialising in bats and badgers and the other in aquatic species and water voles. When the Authority asks for a survey, we arrange it.
The one nobody tells you about: you are the client under CDM 2015
This surprises people more than anything else on this page, and almost no contractor mentions it.
The Construction (Design and Management) Regulations 2015 apply to construction work in Great Britain, including work at a private home. Under them, the person having the work done is legally the client, and the client has duties.
In practice that means welfare facilities on site: a toilet, washing water, somewhere to take a break. It means making sure the site is reasonably safe and that whoever you appoint is competent.
Most people have never heard of any of it, and find out only when something goes wrong.
What we do about it. We tell you it exists, and we point you at the HSE's own guidance so you can read your duties yourself rather than take our word for it. Then, on private domestic jobs, we take those duties on ourselves at no extra cost. We bring the welfare facilities, we manage the site, and the responsibility sits with us.
It costs us very little and it removes an exposure you probably did not know you had.
What we handle, and what stays yours
| WE HANDLE | STAYS WITH YOU |
|---|---|
| Broads Authority planning application | Deciding whether to go ahead |
| Broads Authority works licence | The permit fees themselves |
| Preparing and submitting the flood risk permit application | Legal responsibility for holding the permit |
| Arranging ecological surveys where needed | Access to the site |
| CDM 2015 client duties on domestic jobs | |
| Welfare facilities and site management |
How long it all takes
The permissions usually take longer than the work.
- Planning permission: the statutory target for determining an application of this kind is eight weeks, though it can run longer if consultees ask for more information.
- Works licence: usually a few weeks, and straightforward provided the application is complete.
- Flood risk activity permit: around two months for a bespoke permit. Standard rules permits are quicker where the work fits them.
- Ecological survey, where needed: some surveys can only be done at certain times of year, so this occasionally sets the timetable rather than following it.
Several of these can run in parallel rather than one after another, which is worth knowing if you are in a hurry.
If your quay heading has already gone and the bank is moving, say so early. The sooner the applications go in, the sooner the work can start.
Talk through your stretch of riverbank
If you have just taken on a place on the water, or been told your quay heading is at the end of its working life, we are happy to walk through what applies to your particular stretch of riverbank. No charge for that conversation.