Stratford on Avon District Council is offering Small Businesses the opportunity to get free planning advice on 'Minor' commercial applications. Applications for the building of dwellings is NOT covered by this free service.

This service, usually chargeable, is open to small businesses and applications meeting the following criteria

A Small Business...

For the purposes of the Free Pre App a small business must meet at least 2 of the 3 criteria below in the last 3 years filing :

• Employees: A business with a total of 50 employees or less.
• Annual Turnover: A gross annual turnover not exceeding £15million
• Balance Sheet Total : Gross assets (before liabilities) NOTexceeding £7.5 million

A Small business can be a Limited Company, Limited Liability Partnership, Community Interest Company, a Co-Operative, a traditional Partnership or Sole trader. Sole traders & Partnerships will need to provide accounts for checking.

Where a company is part of a group, it is the group that must meet the above criteria.

A Minor application...

This should be a proposed application creating less than 1,000 square metres of new floor space on a site smaller than 1 hectare

For further details please see the following planning page .