I know that we took a little bit of a risk starting the dig before getting the building permit (déclaration préalable) but it has been over two months since we submitted the application and therefore tacit approval could be assumed.
The bit that got me nervous, however, was an email that I sent to the planning department (our commune combines their planning departments with other small communes in the areas). The response I got was that the application had been considered and the response had been passed back to the Mayor (Maire) on the 12th August.
I had been to check a couple of times last week, when we arrived back in France, but the Mayor’s office was closed for two weeks for holidays… Knowing all of this made me start to get a little nervous.
What made me even more nervous was my expectation that any letter from the Mayor would be bad news, given the system of tacit approval I had previously assumed that no news is good news… Anyway, when I got to the Mayor’s office, there was a letter waiting for me and Google Translate didn’t really do my blood pressure any good on this occasion. The initial scan of the paper, as translated by Google, showed in big bold letters “OBJECTION TO APPLICATION”. I know my French is not great, but even I thought that Google should have picked up on the word “NON” in front of that…
Anyway, all good news and the great big whole that we have dug is not vein and we have the formal permission to continue with the pool with no objections.