Planning permission
Whilst we had been very active in helping design our new house, we left this stage of the process in the capable hands of French Property Renovation. They had previously done their homework on what was considered good practice by the local Mairie, and made sure that the local character was respected with regard to colour, type of roofing, etc. This not only ensured that the planning application went through without a hitch, we also discovered later that it also earned us brownie points with the neighbours.