KJ Tait were appointed by Dandara to carry out an assessment of the daylight available at and around their proposed new residential development located at the Pinkhill site in Edinburgh.

We carried out detailed analysis of the Vertical Sky Component (VSC) available at the existing surrounding residential properties to ensure compliance with the City of Edinburgh Council guidance and to provide guidance on the available daylight surrounding the proposed building scheme, and to support the planning application for the development.

The project consisted of the provision of:

• Vertical Sky Component Calculation to the existing Cala development to the South.
• Average daylight factor calculations on the proposed rooms within the development to ensure internal daylight standards were met.

We were able to demonstrate that the development satisfies the technical guidance outlined in the BRE document “Site layout and planning for daylight and sunlight: a guide to good practice” in terms of the impact upon neighbouring properties.

Of the neighbouring buildings evaluated as part of this study, all residential elevations fully meet the recommendations of BRE guidance and Edinburgh Technical Guidance with regards to the vertical sky component analysis.

The majority of internal rooms were shown to comply with the ‘no sky line’ approach outlined in the Edinburgh Design Guidance. The ones that did not were assessed using Average Daylight Factor (ADF) where compliance was achieved for the bedroom and living areas.