Bricking Up External Porch / Porch Extension

tractorette

We are looking at getting our internal garage converted into a reception room, including putting a new internal door in between that room and our small hallway. This new door would essentially mean we no longer have space for a shoe cabinet in the hallway, so we were wondering if we have any options r.e. making our hallway bigger. 

We do have a small external covered porch outside the front door (approx 0.8m by 1.3m), and one option we were considering was bricking this up and bringing the existing front door (or a new one, but it isnt in too bad condition) forwards to create a slightly bigger hallway. Would we need planning permission for this? We are hoping not, given it doesnt extend beyond the current roofline. Should reusing the current door be viable? And therefore if its just building regs, is there anything particular to keep in mind? Is it a job that's worth the money (we lose the external covered area which is good shelter from the rain when unlocking/ knocking at the door; we gain space for a shoe caninet)? 

Originally we had seen that it was possible to add a porch up to 3m2 without planning permission, and therefore hoped we could extend the hallway out by even further than the current external porch. But we have now realised that we had been using the words "hallway" and "porch" too interchangeably and it seems we would only be able to do this if we kept our current external door and then added on a new one to the new porch space, rather than what we had wanted which was one big hall space with just the one external door! So this either wouldnt offer us enough in terms of space OR would require planning permission. 

Any thoughts/ advice here? Have we interpreted the guidance right? Are we silly to care so much around having space for shoe storage in the hallway?! We don't have much other storage in the house unfortunately!

Ectophile

How many shoes have you got?

If you move the front door, then your front porch becomes part of the house, and so needs to meet building regulations.  That could mean upgrading the porch, to modern insulation standards.

Emmia

You'd also have a joist visible as you'd be knocking through the front wall of the house, so it may be bigger, but it might not be "open" in the way that you might envisage. My parents extended their hall in this way 25 years ago (but replacing a porch which was just a roof, with brick. They also reused the door so that's possible, but may depend on the condition of the door.

Rosa_Damascena

I think that as soon as you brick up an open porch it will require PP because you are essentially creating a room. Presumably your porch is to the front and not the rear of your property? Regs have been relaxed to the degree you can push your luck at the rear of the house though.

Happy to be corrected if I'm wrong, where's DoozerGirl when you need her?

DevilDamo

Providing you meet the rest of the PD criteria for a porch, then no need to worry about Planning.

if however you intend to remove or re-locate the original front front door, then BR’s would normally apply as that (under BR’s) would be seen as a conversion, similar to the BR requirements for a garage conversion.