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A wee rant on MGRA

Forgive me, but sometimes you just know that a Planning action is; a) stupid, and b) will be repealed in due course. This of course does nothing to help the person who, in this case, is simply trying to put a small extension on their house in the North Lanarkshire area. What am I talking about? Well the crux of this is, how do you assess the risk of mine gas in an urban area?

The Council has a new assessment tool which effectively places much of the urban environment in the Medium or High risk category resulting in each property passing through Planning to require a bespoke assessment. You could do a desk top study however, if you cannot proved that the historic coal mine seam is not gassing then you will have to drill several boreholes, install standpipes and monitor gas levels over a significant period of time which is ruinously expensive for a simple kitchen extension. But wait! the solution could be to bear the cost of additional gas protection measures for the extension - problem solved, except that this is also expensive for small extensions particularly if it entails a re-design of the entire foundation. 

Here, however, is the kicker - for a property which does not have gas protection measures, what is to stop mine gas simply making its way up through the existing building and into the new extension? Answer - nothing, rendering the expensive protection measures for the extension pointless. 

Of course Terrenus can help with all this but in my mind this is poor science, poor engineering and fosters poor development which is needlessly expensive for people simply trying to improve their properties. 

Let me know what you think.