Neighbour's new house

johnward

Our neigfhbour is seeking planning permission for a two storey house in his garden in the space between his current house and ours. His plot is very wide because the plans for this area, when building started in the 1930's, included a series of alleyways to enable commuters easier access to Orpington station and one of these was between our two gardens. In the event this particular alley was not needed so the land was sold to the original owner of his house. Apart from issues of privacy and the right to light should the house actually be built is the problems that will arise if it isn't. He has told me that he is asking for 'planning' to increase the value of his property and that he does not intend building a house himself. That being the case we have the problem, should we ever want to move, of trying to sell with a building site next door. Alternatively, there is no building site but prospective buyers are put off by the likelihood of there being one at some time in the future or of some monstrous building going up that imposes itself on our house. Purchasers perceptions of what might be built next door could be enough to deter many people from even looking at the house. We will lose out whether or not the house is actually built.

Any suggestions as to how we should approach the planners?

Time, unfortunately is short.

[Deleted User]

I don't understand why he'd want to spend time & money on having plans drawn out and applying for planning permission if he didn't want to go ahead with it? Either he is telling pork pies or is thinking of selling.

planning_officer

The only valid planning issue you mention is that of privacy - it's not worth mentioning all the 'what ifs' to the planners, as they're not material planning considerations, even though they are undoubtedly important issues for you.

jay11_2

We had a very similar issue when we were selling, someone new bought next door and had hideous plans for an extension. Ours also said he wasn't really going to build...yeah, right! A good strategy to stop people from protesting till it's too late.
We got a few of the other neighbours on our side, did a bit of research r.e. relevant issues, and wrote to planning. We won, and his extension had to be massively scaled down. What we did was:
Look at the plans online (many councils now have this facility, or you can view them in person, look on your council's website)
Chatted with the other neighbours
Wrote to the planning officer (us and a couple of other neighbours), outlining objections on grounds of: 'out of character with other buildings in the area'; 'right to privacy of us and elderly couple on other side of him (huge windows would have overlooked us)'; and 'too big in proportion to size of plot'; access can also be an issue, I think I googled or looked on the council wbesite for reasons to object.

I've no idea what, if anything, worked, but his plans had previously been accepted by planning, and he had to downscale following our letters (it really was awful).

oilit

having sat on the other side of the fence, couple of points:-

1) There is no such thing as a right to light

2)As pointed out above - key items to point to are scale, design and appropriateness and if valid - safety

3) I did exactly the same as your neighbour, but I built it and always said I would, I had 15 complaints against the design (which we knew we would) so we designed it bigger than we wanted, then when rejected we were asked to make it smaller - which gave us the size house we wanted. Access/safety was raised but we dismissed it with a traffic survey and request for safety statement from the council for the road/junction.

The message being - keep your objections factual and focus on size, distance from boundary, materials (eg are they proposing a plastered house if all others around are stone) and style. The chances are it will get approved, and will be built within 5 years (as that is how long pp lasts.) I suspect he will get pp and split the land off and sell it to a developer - whichj means the property will be developed quickly - which is good news for you.

HTH

Dinah93

Standard time condition on pp is now 3 years. Although you have made me question whether this is statutory or just my Local Authority's decision. It sounds like this house might even out the streetscene and your main concerns are the buidling time? I think most people coming to view a house would accept that it is no different to building an extension in terms of disturbance, and usually a condition is imposted to restrict works to 8-6 or 9-5. At the end of the day the house would more than likely take under a year to build, so it wouldn't be a noise forever to anyone buying your house.If works haven't started when you come to sell, make sure you have a copy of the plans for what is going next door so you can show them it is in proportion. That said when searches are run on a property they are run on an individual plot, the one the buyer is buying, and will only throw up adjacent permissions if they pay to have that plot done too. Maybe 2% of buyers pay to have searches done on adjacent properties. Ethically you should tell them if there is a pp granted next door, but legally you are not obligated to.

I am a planning officer working in a local authority. Any advice offered here should not be construed as legal advice and is purely an informal opinion.

dander

Planning permission will be granted (or not granted) on the specific plans he presents, so if he doesn't build himself, you and any prospective purchasers of your house will know exactly what is allowed to go up there.

If someone did want to build something different - the "monstrous building that imposes" - then they would have to reapply for planning permission for the new building.

oilit

Dinah93 wrote: »

Standard time condition on pp is now 3 years. Although you have made me question whether this is statutory or just my Local Authority's decision.

Ive heard this before - but our LA is 5 yrs - and that is the case 6 months ago when I got permission on something else..

dander wrote: »

Planning permission will be granted (or not granted) on the specific plans he presents, so if he doesn't build himself, you and any prospective purchasers of your house will know exactly what is allowed to go up there.

If someone did want to build something different - the "monstrous building that imposes" - then they would have to reapply for planning permission for the new building.

Unless of course they are applyiong for OP versus detailed.

planning_officer

oilit wrote: »

Ive heard this before - but our LA is 5 yrs - and that is the case 6 months ago when I got permission on something else.

The Planning and Compulsory Purchase Act 2004 replaced all references in previous legislation to planning permissions lasting for 5 years and instead rules that all applications granted full planning permission will last for 3 years. This is national legislation, therefore your LPA cannot be any different - if you've had something granted permission with a standard time limit condition stating work must be commenced in 5 years, then the LPA have made an error (see section 51: http://www.opsi.gov.uk/ACTS/acts2004/ukpga_20040005_en_6#pt4-pb7-l1g51

This applies to all planning permissions (for full planning permission) granted after 24 August 2005.

However, with regards to outline permissions, the 2004 Act still allows for a three year period to obtain all reserved matters approvals and a further two year period is allowed for the start on site after the date of the last reserved matters approval. So if the reserved matters applications (or some of them) are delayed until nearly the end of the three year period, the whole process can be stretched out to approximately five years.