Project Transform
Project Transform

Applying for Outline Planning Permission

We will be applying for Outline Planning Permission to build a new facility on our reference site in Coventry.

This application will be based on our Outline Business Case to build a facility to treat household waste and generate energy in the form of electricity and potentially heat.

What does Outline Planning mean?

This type of planning application is submitted if you want to know whether planning permission will be given “in principle” to a proposed development or if you do not have all the details required to submit a Full Planning Application.

Outline Planning Permission can be granted with ‘all matters reserved’. This means that specific additional details will need to be provided at a later date and before any work on a site can begin. Reserved matters could include any of the following, but these will be decided by the Planning Authority on a case by case basis:
  • appearance - aspects of a building or place which affect the way it looks, including the exterior of the development
  • means of access - covers accessibility for all routes to and within the site, as well as the way they link up to other roads and pathways outside the site
  • landscaping - the improvement or protection of the amenities of the site and the area and the surrounding area, this could include planting trees or hedges as a screen
  • layout - includes buildings, routes and open spaces within the development and the way they are laid out in relations to buildings and spaces outside the development
  • scale - includes information on the size of the development, including the height, width and length of each proposed building
We are applying for Outline Planning Permission in Coventry as we want to establish an end use for the site – if we are successful it will mean that a waste treatment facility could be built on the proposed site, next to the existing Energy from Waste facility.

As we are applying for Outline Planning Permission we have not gone into the detail that would be needed for a Full Planning Application. This means that the Councils will not be committed to a particular design or layout because we are still discussing this with a number of selected companies.

Once we have chosen the company we want to work with they will then need to apply for Full Planning Permission and provide details of any reserved matters that were identified by the Planning Authority at the Outline Planning stage.

Will the Full Planning Application be the same as the Outline Planning Application?

There will be some similarities between the Outline and Full Applications, but the Full Application will go into more detail than the Outline Application; it will provide specific information about aspects of site design and layout and would be subject to various conditions required by the Planning Authority.

What will stay the same?

The Full Application will cover the same geographical area and will not go beyond the agreed site boundary.

What is likely to change?

It is likely that the selected company will propose a different design to the one used for the Outline Planning Application – so the final facility may look different.