Seller didn't disclose neighbour's approved planning permission - do we have any recourse?

elsien

I can confirm from experience that councils saying property owners will have been made aware of the planning proposal isn’t necessarily the case. 

The seller may genuinely not have known.
My address was on a list of properties the council alleged had been sent letters. The majority of us hadn’t received a thing. 

Your vendor could be telling porkies but I’m not sure how you’d ever prove it. 

[Deleted User]

Are there any options for mitigating the disruption and loss if privacy? Maybe some trees or something to block their view.

TheJP

jonnydeppiwish! said:

TheJP said:

blackbaccararose said:

custardly said:

Caveat emptor. 

You would have to prove that the buyer knew about it and deliberately misled. Unless they have admitted this to you in writing you don't have a chance.

Thank you, I did wonder about this - just wasn't sure how much weight ticking "no" on the T6 (and the council telling me that he would have received a notice) would hold. Definitely a caveat emptor lesson for us in future!

You would need to prove that the council have receipt of the previous seller receiving notice. Usually the council gives notice to neighbouring properties by sticking the notice on a lamppost which they deem adequate notice. 

They also tend to send letters to the neighbours and then the neighbours comment on the application. Isn’t the question about proposals rather than approved planning permission?

Again you need to provide evidence the seller received the letter, just because the council may have sent the letter to the address doesn't mean it got there, my local Facebook community page has daily posts about mail delivered to the wrong house. Unless the council sent this as signed delivery then its a no. Unless the council has records of the seller objecting to the plans. 

goater78

You should have searched for planning permission in the local area before you exchanged. There is no real excuse not too. 

Neighbour probably knew but hard to prove and not sure what remedy you can ask for. Whether having a house built behind your house significantly lowers the value of your house is probably a bit subjective. 

unforeseen

Were they even aware that pp had been granted? You would only get notice of the intended application and not the result. 

Grizebeck

TheJP said:

jonnydeppiwish! said:

TheJP said:

blackbaccararose said:

custardly said:

Caveat emptor. 

You would have to prove that the buyer knew about it and deliberately misled. Unless they have admitted this to you in writing you don't have a chance.

Thank you, I did wonder about this - just wasn't sure how much weight ticking "no" on the T6 (and the council telling me that he would have received a notice) would hold. Definitely a caveat emptor lesson for us in future!

You would need to prove that the council have receipt of the previous seller receiving notice. Usually the council gives notice to neighbouring properties by sticking the notice on a lamppost which they deem adequate notice. 

They also tend to send letters to the neighbours and then the neighbours comment on the application. Isn’t the question about proposals rather than approved planning permission?

Again you need to provide evidence the seller received the letter, just because the council may have sent the letter to the address doesn't mean it got there, my local Facebook community page has daily posts about mail delivered to the wrong house. Unless the council sent this as signed delivery then its a no. Unless the council has records of the seller objecting to the plans. 

Even if they objected covered under gdpr so no name or address revealed

MultiFuelBurner

Grizebeck said:

TheJP said:

jonnydeppiwish! said:

TheJP said:

blackbaccararose said:

custardly said:

Caveat emptor. 

You would have to prove that the buyer knew about it and deliberately misled. Unless they have admitted this to you in writing you don't have a chance.

Thank you, I did wonder about this - just wasn't sure how much weight ticking "no" on the T6 (and the council telling me that he would have received a notice) would hold. Definitely a caveat emptor lesson for us in future!

You would need to prove that the council have receipt of the previous seller receiving notice. Usually the council gives notice to neighbouring properties by sticking the notice on a lamppost which they deem adequate notice. 

They also tend to send letters to the neighbours and then the neighbours comment on the application. Isn’t the question about proposals rather than approved planning permission?

Again you need to provide evidence the seller received the letter, just because the council may have sent the letter to the address doesn't mean it got there, my local Facebook community page has daily posts about mail delivered to the wrong house. Unless the council sent this as signed delivery then its a no. Unless the council has records of the seller objecting to the plans. 

Even if they objected covered under gdpr so no name or address revealed

Addresses certainly appear but no names on our local planning site.

ThisIsWeird

I guess the first thing to work out is if there's any point in pursuing this? Ie, if you did manage to demonstrate 'on the balance of probabilities' that the vendor was fully aware of the successful planning application, and therefore almost certainly fibbed in their SIP, or your conveyancing solicitor was remiss, what would the outcome be? What, realistically, could you expect to gain? 

The answer is, I haven't a scooby. So I suggest your first move is to find out, which I appreciate is part of your Q on here. But really you need a specialist property solicitor, and a quick Google should reveal some very credible companies who will be happy to provide a free opinion on a case. Fire off a brief description to a few of them and see what they say.

Do you have Legal Protection on your house insurance? If so, call them up too.

If the responses from the above suggest you could have a claim, then it may be worth pursuing this for more evidence*.

I suspect it's a non-starter, tho', which reveals the feebleness of the requirement to be honest in the SIP. I've seen this myself with a property mil was well into purchasing, and the owner claimed no breaches of planning or building regs. Well, I pointed out a couple of blatant breaches myself as I looked round, but neither the EA nor our conveyancer were bovvered.

Based on your description of this building, I think it would be likely that neighbouring properties did put in objections to this planning app, but the fact appears to be that it was still approved. So 'Planning' consider it to be 'ok'. In which case, if your neighbour was making this planning application now, after you moved in, the chances are you'd be in the exact same position you are in now - and no-one would have lied about it. So I suspect that's another reason why a claim will have little effect - it won't ultimately have made any difference.

*Evidence: look through all the documents associated with this planning app on your LA's Planning Portal. These should (well, they do in ours) include any notes of dissent. See if your vendor is one of them, either named, or by the fact of the reasons given - loss of privacy to bedrooms, loss of view in x direction, etc. (I notice that on a nearby p app here, the letters of objection showed the authors, and the hypocrisy of one amused me).

Ask the building neighbour if they'd ever discussed  this build with your vendor. Ask your new next door neighbours the same - good chance they'd have chatted about it.

But, worth pursuing? Find that out first.

Sarahspangles

Grizebeck said: Even if they objected covered under gdpr so no name or address revealed 

This is another common misunderstanding about the Planning process. You can’t apply or support/object to an application anonymously. (Okay, there are ways for developers to hide behind shell companies but this is rare)

Local Planning Authorities will redact signatures and limit what is shared online but it’s all on the public record. It’s really common for people to ask to object anonymously - often when they’ve told the neighbour to their face that they will support. You see some absolute humdingers in objections, completely irrelevant of course so these never get into the report other than ‘objection made but not on material grounds’. And the neighbours get to read these!

Grizebeck

Sarahspangles said:

Grizebeck said: Even if they objected covered under gdpr so no name or address revealed 

This is another common misunderstanding about the Planning process. You can’t apply or support/object to an application anonymously. (Okay, there are ways for developers to hide behind shell companies but this is rare)

Local Planning Authorities will redact signatures and limit what is shared online but it’s all on the public record. It’s really common for people to ask to object anonymously - often when they’ve told the neighbour to their face that they will support. You see some absolute humdingers in objections, completely irrelevant of course so these never get into the report other than ‘objection made but not on material grounds’. And the neighbours get to read these!

Not a misconception on my part no
Names and addresses are supplied yes but they are redacted by our local council and others ive lived in so only the comment appears.