Monthly Archives: March 2015

Sunlight Daylight Assessment – Lambeth, London, SE27

Leave a Reply
Sunlight Daylight Assessment – Lambeth, London, SE27

The Sunlight Daylight study has been carried out in accordance with  the recommendations of the Building  Research Establishment Report “Site Layout Planning for Daylight & Sunlight 1991”. This is the  standard adopted by a wide range of District and Borough Councils across the UK.

 The scheme was already sympathetically design by the architects in question when plans were forwarded to SWEL for assessment.

Calculations were carried out to assess impacts. The scheme showed at worst VSC and Sunlight at 84% of their former value and as such the reports recommendation as that the scheme was allowed to proceed.

Sunlight and Daylight Assessment Reports London

Flood Risk Assessment Hammersmith and Fulham (W6 9HB)

Leave a Reply

Flood Risk Assessment Hammersmith and Fulham (W6 9HB)

Acting on instruction received from an architect SWEL have prepared a flood risk assessment for a residential conversion. The scheme was well designed, and the site well placed (interms of level) so as to require the minimum of consideration with regards to resilient design.

High quality modelling data was used to provide a design finished floor level, that was at a very low risk of flooding, the report is being assessed at present with Hammersmith and Fulham Borough Council, and based on our track records SWEL are confident that the report will be well received.

Flood Risk Assessment Reports

Flood Risk Assessment Dartmouth

Leave a Reply

Flood Risk Assessment Dartmouth 

SWEL were approached by a private land owner in Dartmouth, who had an old garage that they wished to convert to residential use.

A scheme was developed that saw a building designed to be minimally affected in the event of flooding. Ground floor living accommodation was not included in the scheme, instead the living accommodation was included only on the 1st floor.

The 1st floor accommodation was proven to above likely flood depths via the use of detailed flood modelling data, which showed the site to flood to a round depth of 0.6 meters in a very bad flood.

Despite a thorough report concerns were raised over flood safety, the main objections coming from the Environment Agency, and as such they were in a mind to refuse the application.

Despite the flood maps showing a depth of 0.6 meters they do not specify a duration for the flood. However thinking pragmatically this is only likely to last 4 – 6 hours owing to influence of tides, it was this concept put forward by SWEL and presented to district council’s development committee, with a successful out come.

Such was the surprise at the persistent objections from the Environment Agency, that the application had some coverage by the local press.

Flood Risk Assessment Reports

Environmental Permit Application – Hereford

Leave a Reply

Environmental Permit Application – Hereford

SWEL were commissioned to undertake two permit applications for a Plastic Film Manufacturer based in Hereford.

One of the permits was for a trunking depot, so primarily categorised as a waste transfer operation, the other involved the treatment of wastes, and as such required a the inclusion of codes for treatment covered within the permit.

The Environment Agency are becoming increasingly concerned with the risk posed by fire and as such each of these application was requested to be accompanied by a fire prevention plan. This not only borrows from fire prevetion, but also mitigation of run-off impact during the extinguishing of a fire.

Both applications were accompanied by and Environmental Management System and a Site Condition Report.

Environmental Permit Application – Progress

At present SWEL are collating information required for the application including planning permission and completion of all requests set out by the Environment Agency during pre-application discussions.

Professional Planning Objection – Lichfield, Birmingham

Leave a Reply

Professional Planning Objection – Lichfield, Birmingham – Into

A residents group from the village of Little Hay, Lichfield approach SWEL with concerns raised regrading the construction of a very large chicken factory, which was proposed to be within 500 meters of various residential and commercial properties.

Professional Planning Objection – Lichfield, Birmingham – Odour

Supporting documents submitted with the application showed that odour in particular was at very low levels, and would not affect surrounding properties, however remodelling of odour emissions by SWEL showed a very different picture.  

Professional Planning Objection – Lichfield, Birmingham – Dust

The dust impact assessment submitted with the application did not consider PM2.5 particulates, There is a wealth of evidence on the effects of short-term exposure to PM10 on respiratory health, but for mortality, and especially as a consequence of long-term exposure, PM2.5 is a stronger risk factor than the coarse part of PM10 (particles in the 2.5–10 μm range). All cause daily mortality is estimated to increase by 0.2–0.6% per 10 μg/m3 of PM10. Long-term exposure to PM2.5is associated with an increase in the long-term risk of cardiopulmonary mortality by 6–13% per 10 μg/m3 of PM2.5 [1].

 So it was felt important that the inadeqaucy of the assessment was brought to the attention o the planning authority.

 Professional Planning Objection – Lichfield, Birmingham – Pathogens

And so though out the application we saw the continued understatement of environmental impacts on a local level, and in some cases there were impacts that had not been considered at all.Such as risk from air bourne pathogens (figure 1).

[1] Pope CA III et al. Lung cancer, cardiopulmonary mortality, and long-term exposure to fine particulate air pollution. Journal of the American Medical Association, 2002, 287(9): 1132–1141.