Is neighbours porch breaking building regs

sarah7610

Hi,
My next door neighbour moved in about 18 months ago and immediately started work on the house, inside and out. Apart from all the hassle I had with the (cowboy) workmen treating my property as a public highway they did some terrible work on their house, some of which has affected my house.
They didn't join the guttering up as it was before which has caused water to cascade down the back and front of my house but my main gripe is their new porch. They knocked the original one down and built a new one right on the boundary between our houses, (terraced housing). It sticks out in front of my window blocking light and the bottom of the pvc panels are actually over the boundary. We now have to put up with next doors visitors peering into our house when they are stood at the door smoking and have to look at this porch.
We are also planning on moving in the next 12 months and I am a bit bothered that this porch will put people off buyng.

What I want to know is...... Is this porch breaking building regulations?
We recently had a workman pricing a job up for us and he says we could get him to take it down due to building regs.

Any advice gratefully recieved

Thankyou

Sarah

Antispam

Complain to the council it may be against planning permission

The guttering is more serious if this is now causing problems with yours it may well cause long term damage to your property though leaking into house, if they dont fix it you could sue them for damages, obviously its best to try and resolve this nicely where possibly

I forgot to say though if you do any of this it may well have to declare it when you sell, trouble is you may have problems with water getting into property now

sarah7610

Thanks.
I have been told that he wll be selling the house soon due to splitting with his partner so I am concerned that I wont be able to do anything if he does move and someone else moves in.
We told him about the guttering last year, (not that he hasn't noticed) but he's done nothing and I don't see why I should have to pay to have something fixed that was caused by him and his cowboys.

missile

If you check you may find you have free legal cover on your household insurance policy? Get their solicitor to contact neighbour asap.

Viper_7

The "right to light" policies seem to be hard to use these days so if this porch is blocking the light, not much you can do. there are rules regarding being able to look back onto your property though, and yes if the building has crossed your boundary even if just the windows encroach then could quite well have a good case.
A good surveyor would point this out to the vendor and the potential new seller. Take it up with you local planning authority - having an open case would also show un a house survey search and make it difficult to sell in the interim.

Fire_Fox

Have you put any of your concerns into writing? If you complain verbally it's far more easily ignored.

charliee_3

http://www.planningportal.gov.uk/england/genpub/en/1115315235275.html

its not very clear but this suggests he would have needed planning permission as its near the boundry

TEDDYRUKSPIN

sarah take a photo and link it on this page. Do you know when the building started? Building regulations were different before October 2008.

sarah7610

Thankyou to everyone for your advice it has been very useful indeed.
I will be contacting the council on Monday as I am now pretty certain this porch should not have been built without planning permision and I doubt very much they would have got it.
I will try and put a photo of it on here but I'm not very good at these sort of things.

Thanks again
Sarah

sarah7610

The porch on the right is the offending article.

espresso

sarah7610 wrote: »

The porch on the right is the offending article.

See if this here helps with posting the picture.