How easy is it to get covenant to removed

H4ppy83

Hi all,
I hope I have posted in the right!

When we bought our home last year we were made aware of many covenants on the property, it's ex council. These range from not extending the house out any further than the further most point, keeping the front garden to lawn or flowerbeds to not having a flag pole, satellite dish attended to the property. These were added to the property in 1983 and are for the whole estate.

My question is, we want to convert our front garden to a driveway/hard stand and were wondering how easy this is to achieve, bearing in mind the above.

On looking around the estate there are plenty of homes with large extensions and of course sky dishes, something tells me everyone with sky dishes didn't apply for permission!

Thanks in advance.

Furts

For extensions it is probable that those around you applied for Planning and for Building Regulations. Hence the Council are aware of what has been done. You are assuming that no action has been taken regarding the convenants. I suggest you ask these people for their comments.

The pragmatic answer is probably that the Council does not have the resources to pursue such items. But the risk is that one day they might - as a potential source of revenue.

Changing front gardens to parking is a delicate area with some Councils, but the Sky dishes are probably viewed as temporary items- hence a blind eye is turned to them.

H4ppy83

I assume then until we able to the council we will not know how feasible it is

manda1205

As soon as you put in any planning permission, the council will soon pipe up about the covenant. They will then want to charge you X amount to remove it.
My MIL had this exact same problem. She wanted to build another house onto the end of hers, put in the planning and then the council sent her a letter saying she had a covenant that would cost her £30,000 to remove! They based this figure on how much profit they thought she would make from selling the other house!!!! She haggled with them a lot and ended up getting it down to around £4000. But be warned if they think they can make a £ out of you they will!

andrewf75

We had one of these and it was a nightmare to remove because the council just didn't know how to go about it, which I assume is because most people just ignore it! But we did it by the book and it cost about £80 to remove.

If you're only wanting to do what many others have done then its nothing to worry about, but may be some hassle getting hold of the right person to deal with it.

I think there are rules about driveways in terms of drainage, but as long as you follow the rules there and don't just concrete over I can't see it being a problem whether you bother to remove the covenant or not. For the sake of a small amount its probably worth it to save problems down the line when selling.