property/planning/letting a room advice

bobalicious

seven-day-weekend wrote:

I agree, but I'm not sure this is the case in the OP's situation.

No bathroom. From the sounds of it... Therefore not capable of use in isolation.

bobalicious

seven-day-weekend wrote:

It's ten years if we are talking about its use - four years is for an unlawful building to become exempt from enforcement action.

The building does not sound as though it is unlawful, as it was erected under PD rights, plus they've got the cert. from the LPA. So the building is there. And it's there lawfully. The only question that therefore arises is from use. Which from the sounds of it, is likely to be lawful. Even if it wasn't, it would become immune from enforcement action after four years for resi.

(for non planning readers: basically a building becomes lawful after ten years. But resi use of a building becomes lawful after four years)

And just to be very boring, it is Section 171 of the 1990 Act that specifies the four year/ten year differential.

Somerset

Just came back to this.

The building has a small room with loo and wash hand basin - but no bath. This runs to it's own septic tank, because it was too far from the house.

The history was. A wooden building was there originally of this size, but was falling down. I wanted/needed to replace it with something useful. A council planner came out and suggested a granny annex ie said it would probably be ok. We put in a planning app but it was rejected out of hand. A permitted development was suggested by them but they wouldn't put it in writing. I tried for a Cert of Lawfulness which at least made them answer me. They said it wasn't legitimising an unlawful building and after discussing it finially in writing said the building (as described-uses) satisfied the ppd requirements. I know I didn't have to have it in writing, but I wanted something from them before building it. In total the whole thing took 18 months and 7 planners - every time I wrote, when I chased, the person had moved on. My enquiries weren't put on their system, just the original failed planning app. I'm not complaining ... just it was impossible dealing with them.