Neighbours have built a huge shelter in their back garden overlooking ours

itsnotarace

We live in an old house which at one point must have had quite a lot of land attached to it on quite a slope out the back, but previous owners split the land into several houses with decent sized gardens (in Scotland.)
So our back garden has a flat part to it, then a set of stairs up to the grassy part of our garden which is also flat.
There is then a boundry wall of about 5 feet and just behind that a fence about 6 feet high, and behind that fence is our neighbours house.
So despite a boundry of really about 11 feet high, our neighbour has a fence which comes up above ours and yet they can easily stand and look over both fences to talk to us.
This isn't an issue - it's always been like that and was like that when we bought the house. No big deal at all.
However, for info, this means that their garden (also flat) sits about 11 feet higher than ours.

And now to the issue. Last year they built a summer house in their back garden which is nice enough.
However in the past few weeks in addition to this, they have built a new structure next to the summer house which i don't even know what to call.
It's basically 6 huge support posts with roof beams and corrugated plastic sheets covering the ceiling. It's not attached to any other structure, and there are no side panels etc, so it's like a shelter with a slightly sloped roof.
It looks fairly robust and I'm sure it's built soundly, but it certainly isn't pretty.
It's way taller than the summer house - at a guess at least 4 meters tall and must be around 25 metres squared at least, and it completely towers over our garden.
Each row of corrugated roofing has a lot of LED light bulbs hanging from it in lines - at least 50- 60 LED bulbs hanging from the roof.
When they get switched on, it's like that scene in National Lampoons Christmas Vacation.

The lights are on most nights now, and completely illuminate our garden and because of the slope they are about level with our bedroom window. We close the blinds of course, but there are so many lights that the light bleeds in round the edges anyway.

We get on fine with the neighbours, but with the time and money they've sunk into this structure, i know if we approach them about it, we are probably going to cause an issue.
In the grand scheme of things, it's a small problem, but this is a pretty permanent structure and i can imagine this could effect resale value of our house as well.
I know there are some building regs regarding decking in sloped gardens, but not sure that there is anything applying to structures of this sort.
Is this something we just have to learn to live with?

Aylesbury_Duck

In short, yes.

Towser

No. It depends on planning regs. The size of the two structures must not be bigger than a certain size of the garden.

You must object to the council. I have done this with a satisfactory result.

FreeBear

Towser wrote: »

No. It depends on planning regs. The size of the two structures must not be bigger than a certain size of the garden.

You must object to the council. I have done this with a satisfactory result.

There are also height restrictions. In England & Wales, I believe it is 2.4m. The OP would need to check with local building control.

Apodemus

If the structure is within a set distance from the boundary, this can also be a planning consideration.

But if you don’t want to go all formal and set the planners onto your neighbours (it is by no means certain that the Planners would do anything as most Councils are very short of enforcement officers), could you ask them to screen the side facing you, so that the lights no longer shine your way? Some cheap bamboo screening might look better from your side, without adversely affecting their use of the structure or its appearance from their side.

Davesnave

As Freebear says, in England and Wales there are height restrictions for outbuildings without express planning permission close to property boundaries, and also for decking.

I don't know what rules apply in Scotland or even where to look, but there must be something similar. Whether you want to enforce rules, if they've broken them, is a judgement for you to make.


How about here:
https://www.mygov.scot/perm-development-works/


You have the option of planting trees and hedging if legislation or personal judgement cannot help you deal with insensitive placement of a structure like this, which they might want to call a 'pergola' in order to get around planning. However, if it has a roof, I would argue that it's not a pergola. The closest structure might be a car port.

LadyDee

Isn't there some legislation which covers "light pollution"? I'm pretty sure there are local Council byelaws about it in E&W - maybe there is similar in Scotland?

stator

Just grass them up to the council, the council will enforce the planning laws.
With a structure that size, next to a terraced boundary of that depth, it is almost certainly in breech

sevenhills

Maybe they could shield the LEDs in some way, it may not address all of your problems.

dunroving

You can report unregulated building works to the Council. Pick up the phone and make a call.

I can't tell from your description what sort of structure they have built, but if it is within 6 metres of the boundary, it may need to have a fireproof roof. If it is within 1 metre of the boundary, it also may need to have a fireproof wall.

The above may depend on what type of building it is and whether it is attached in any way to your house. Some relevant sections of the building code are 2.7 and 2.8.

So, beside the possible planning permissions, there may be building regulation issues that are more trouble to remediate than is worth it, i.e., might be simpler for them to simply demolish the structure.

the_lunatic_is_in_my_head

Isn't this one of those tea and cake things, the neighbours are probably too excited about their new LED lights to think about the impact on the OP.

The novelty will likely wear off but a friendly mention about the lights might solve half the problem.

If you go down the route of the council and end up living with neighbours who have a grudge this would be worse than living with the new structure IMHO.