Can't extend in any meaningful way, what to do?

Raindance25

My husband and I live in what is a 3 bed semi on paper, but really it's a 2 bed. You could just about squeeze a cot into the third "bedroom". The entire building was divided into two but it wasn't an even split, so we've got about a third of it and our neighbours have the other two thirds. As a result, it's pretty narrow but has a spectacular 50m long garden, which is a big part of what attracted us to it in the first place. Logically, you would think this offers us good potential to extend while still having a nice outdoor space. 

We worked with an architect to come up with a two storey extension at the rear; the ground floor would extend out by 8m and the first floor by 2m, giving us a new kitchen, utility room, toilet and entryway downstairs and a proper third bedroom and decent bathroom upstairs. If we could get the extension we needed, we could basically live here forever quite happily.

We've discussed our extension plans in detail both with the neighbours that we share a wall with, and the neighbours in the house on the other side of us - both sets have been a dream to live next to and have only been positive/ encouraging (the neighbours sharing a wall have their own hopes to extend someday, so they're even happy for us to build brick wall up to the boundary line because it would benefit them in the long run). There have been 0 responses from the public to the planning application on the online portal. This is all to say: nobody, whether they're someone that would be materially affected or just a busybody, has raised any objections to this. 

The planning officer has advised that our application will be refused and getting the reasoning for it out of them has been like getting blood from a stone. After multiple emails back and forth, it emerged that the issue was "primarily" with the first floor/ second storey, and the planning officer was concerned that it would lead to loss of light for our neighbours. The properties are all on an east/ west orientation and none of the rooms at the rear of our neighbours' homes are habitable (i.e. they're bathrooms, not bedrooms, living rooms, etc.), so we can't really understand that reasoning.

We decided to just try and go for the ground floor extension instead, since that would still give us a meaningful improvement and got shot down there as well. Now there is concern about the overbearing impact of an 8m ground floor extension, despite the fact that there are a number of properties along the road which already have comparable extensions - in fact, the property on the other side of one of our neighbours looks like Frankenstein's monster where it's been extended multiple times and comes nearly halfway down their garden! 

We can extend up to 6m on the ground floor under permitted development, meaning the council cannot refuse this, but because the house is so narrow it wouldn't give us the space we actually need. We can't stomach spending all that money and having ourselves and our neighbours go through all the disruption for a disappointing end result. 

I was shocked at how poor the communication was with the planning officer but the architect confirmed that unfortunately this is pretty normal behaviour. We've tried asking firms that specialise in planning appeals for advice but they've been useless and said that they can't offer any at this stage. We're also put off of letting the planning application be formally refused because we've heard that the appeals process can be hideously expensive, especially when hiring a specialist to argue against subjective decisions like this. 

We sent the email off last night asking to withdraw our planning application and I'm feeling bereft in the wake of it. Have we done this prematurely? Was it worth having an official refusal on record and appealing/ fighting for it? Sorry for the lengthy read, but thank you for your patience if you made it this far.

Section62

Raindance25 said:

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We sent the email off last night asking to withdraw our planning application and I'm feeling bereft in the wake of it. Have we done this prematurely? Was it worth having an official refusal on record and appealing/ fighting for it? Sorry for the lengthy read, but thank you for your patience if you made it this far.

Yes.  Appealing a planning application doesn't have to be expensive, but you need a decision from the council to appeal.  By withdrawing your application you'd now have to start from scratch again, albeit you could submit the same supporting documents.

However, there are two things to bear in mind -

1) The views of the neighbours +ve/-ve don't really matter that much.  The lack of objection from the neighbours (and anyone else) doesn't mean the planners will/should approve an application.  They need to weigh the application against the local plan and planning policy (regional/national) and if there is an objective (such as resisting over development) then they can refuse the application.  Clearly there could be cases of neighbour non-objection in situations where overdevelopment is proposed, because the neighbours have similar plans themselves.

2) What other people have done already doesn't make much difference.  Each application is considered on its own merits, and the fact a neighbour has built an enormous extension doesn't set "precedent" that everyone else can.  In fact the opposite can be the case - the more people who extend, the more overdeveloped an area can become and/or there is a loss of smaller homes more suited to FTB's or people on low incomes.

The planner has to give a reasoned justification for their decision - so had you allowed the application to go to a formal decision you would know exactly what the reasons were, and could get a better idea if there were grounds to appeal.  It isn't surprising the planner was vague/non-committal in their feedback - this isn't a failing of the planner, rather them likely wanting to avoid saying anything which could undermine/contradict their final decision.  The days when you could phone up the case officer and have a friendly unofficial chat are more or less over.

gm0

Welcome to the hellscape

You misunderstand the process, the competence (or lack thereof) and the attitude that flows from it.

Planning permission for individual consumers - is correctly - way down the priority list for councils.  Who should be working on bigger projects delivering more housing first. And ensuring community goals for other infrastructure and impacts are extracted from developers. One result. Donkey team members allocated to householder applications and spare time at end of month from the actualyl trained and empowered - for the stack of minor applications.  What they should do is triage these aggressively for mad stuff - and just sign off a load of them without too much nonsense.  Yet that is not what sometimes happens.  Cyclical kicking for touch.  At least in my LA.  Maybe there are others with exemplary and sensible approaches which meet legal obligations and are householder friendly.  Maybe we are all going to heaven in a pie.  You live where you live.  You get to use that one.

Another common result for householders alongside getting the office junior with no power to agree anything - is delays.  Lack of focus, lack of clarity. Queuing.  

Not without sympathy to the planning dept.  Funding for planning is tight given social care budgets and related legal obligation budgets have with inflation and pay rising more than council tax caps - eaten the whole cake. And planning would be worse still but for the legal obligation elements.  And they are setup a certain way by the legal obligations and how they are defined.

Councils are (in theory) committed to timescales and legal criteria for assessment of applications. Criteria rounded out by the local plan.  And to a degree - decision precedent.  Householders (self included) generaly do not know the jargon and rules of it.

Planning with excess applications over supply of people to do them - do seem very adept at building queues around these rules. And using the "agree to delay vs instant refusal games" to spin things out.   

Imagine the office junior (unempowered) as a deadline approaches - finds a friday afternoon 20 minutes with an actual planner - to create some nonsense vaguely linked to the file to send back to the consumer again as a pending minded to refuse - over to you sucker - chess clock type of response.  My own application was handled that way for a year.  Minded to refuse unless you make it blue. Minded to refuse unless you make it  not blue.  No narrative consistency. No reading the file.  It is utterly enraging.  And then later funny because the only person damaged by getting cross about it is you. So best to treat them with amused contempt instead.  They are a gatekeeper and you have to win their game by their rules.  They will not help you.  They will waste the little time they have to do the job on stupid games - driven by the legal criteria and the options they live by.  Which don't seem to include pragmatically signing relatively uncontroversial things off.

There is a clear incentive for them to not debate with you or disclose details of any kind.  Nor is it their role or funding to be a helpful project shaping service - like an architect or building engineer or planning consultant.

As this compromises their position at appeal or if challenged.  So limit all interaction with you to legal notices.  Is their best interest.  So they just don't play.  Our council suspended all pre-application "ask the planner" services (non-binding chat pre-application to help householders form approvable plans and avoid obvious no-no stuff) at covid. And never restarted.  Now you cannot talk to them at all as a householder. Just throw things in blind. Bigger queue of applications waiting to be accepted into the formal queue.  But no time spent talking to dreadful householders.  Even more unavailable and shielded.

The system is opaque, frustrating - I would say pretty much broken.  It is not possible to get free help with beating your way through it.  That costs your time or money.  If determined.  

If you need to "beat the criteria" to get ot a particular project shape.  Then you need to look serious, with well crafted plans.  Multiple cycles over several years. Going to appeal.  Knockng down the barriers.

Sometimes use of planning consultants who can brow beat back on local plan and precedents as they apply to legal criteria - where a consumer will just get bluffed.   

The ukselfbuiild forum has many people on it who have been through the process and have wisdom on some of the tricks.  Focus is generally on full self build not extensions.

A rejected application is of no risk to the planning officer.  A positive approval decision or an agreed compromise is.  They respond powerfully to the incentive.  A withdrawn one resets all clocks. Another good result.  

The occasional approval - bloodied and beaten and triple checked - staggering out of the end of the process is unfortunate to bureacratice tidiness but probably politically necessary.

As a result - customer hostile  

Quacks like a duck.  Duck.

If PD doesn't cut it.  Then don't fall into the trap of compromsing before applying in hope of approval.  Nobody is looking at it through that lens.  Do the application for the extension you want.  

If pushing the envelope vs the precedent of the street/area.  Planning consultant may well be needed to hold a more aggressive design line.  

But if more in line with what has already happened locally. DIY (with or without appeal) may be workable after delays and much nonsense and loops.

Running away gets you - nothing.  PD only.  If you have that.  I don't even have that.

Raindance25

Section62 said:

Yes.  Appealing a planning application doesn't have to be expensive, but you need a decision from the council to appeal.  By withdrawing your application you'd now have to start from scratch again, albeit you could submit the same supporting documents...

The planner has to give a reasoned justification for their decision - so had you allowed the application to go to a formal decision you would know exactly what the reasons were, and could get a better idea if there were grounds to appeal.  It isn't surprising the planner was vague/non-committal in their feedback - this isn't a failing of the planner, rather them likely wanting to avoid saying anything which could undermine/contradict their final decision.  The days when you could phone up the case officer and have a friendly unofficial chat are more or less over.

Thanks for replying, it's all really useful stuff but I wanted to focus on these bits since I'm pretty ignorant of how planning applications work overall. We did have concerns that if we lost the appeal and had to give up and look at selling/ moving, having that on record might be something that put buyers off or affected the price. It may be the case that someone else would be perfectly happy with the existing footprint of the house or content to just extend within permitted development though, so is that a particularly realistic concern?

In particular the planner having to give a reasoned justification is what's throwing me. I don't understand why they've made it so difficult to get any information when their feedback really should be the same stuff that's going to be in the report, or is that not how it is? Completely agree, it's gutting that you can't just call up and talk things out a bit anymore, unfortunately the days of being able to do that were all before my time.

gm0

The rejection will be minimally drafted. Skeletal. Not explained. Linked to the legal grounds underpinning the decision.   

Giving you more explanation just increases the attack surface for appeal based on the additional drafting.  So don't add any.  Certainly don't write to the consumer explaining what you are going to do. Slap hand away from keyboard.  Standard forms of words to context. In formal notice.

Incentives drive behaviour.  Unhelpful behaviour. No clues.

They are not a householder design help service.  Even for planning aspects. 

The requirements "in theory" will not shift on you.  As I experienced - in practice - during the process - subjective interpretations may vary freely and without consistency until you force the issue of a decision notice.  Neither are planning, building control, nor listed buildings (for the unlucky few) operating to the same single underpinning legal basis. So they variously do not have to want the same thing.   Navigating the contradictory inputs is an exercise for the householder or their hired help.  And people then wonder why some people just say - the heck with it - and go off and do stuff pushing the paperwork problem far downstream to future conveyancing.  Unless you buld a mansion hidden behind a haystack - in many cases - nobody will come for you.

Debating with them in flight may work. Worth a go.  To get that single run approval.  But you have to expect that it may not lead to a satisfactory conclusion and just loop.  In which case your incentive is the minimum list of rejection criteria to work on - as soon as possible.  So you respond to your incentive and don't entertain their delaying tactics BS.  Decision please. Grounds.

Formal decision gives you either approval or a todo list - on a timeline.  It feels "right" to interact and debate. But sometimes it really isn't.    I fell into that trap.  They then applied mad planning conditions. And I had to make a 2nd application loop to remove the maddest element.  Which they had been happy to apply. Yet were too embarrassed to actually stand behind with a 2nd full application - just to remove it.

I agree with you having refused applications is mildly unhelpful as these are public records.  And potential buyers can see them.  So buyers that look at the house superficially through an "I could extend that" lens will see the increased difficulty attached when they do searches etc.   It will tend to put buyers in a "it's worth the price of a house the size it is. And the site development potential may well continue to be zero. So I'm valuing that at zero.  It's a small house but with a larger than usual (for current practice) back garden.   In which case having the house without the rejected applications would be better for selling to a broader audience who can find out about extending it for themselves later.

PP needs to be because you are planning to actually do it the improving project. Can afford it. And your circumstances don't shift while you are fighting the bureaucracy

Raindance25

gm0 said:
I agree with you having refused applications is mildly unhelpful as these are public records.  And potential buyers can see them.  So buyers that look at the house superficially through an "I could extend that" lens will see the increased difficulty attached when they do searches etc.   It will tend to put buyers in a "it's worth the price of a house the size it is. And the site development potential may well continue to be zero. So I'm valuing that at zero.  It's a small house but with a larger than usual (for current practice) back garden.   In which case having the house without the rejected applications would be better for selling to a broader audience who can find out about extending it for themselves later.

PP needs to be because you are planning to actually do it the improving project. Can afford it. And your circumstances don't shift while you are fighting the bureaucracy

That's my exact concern if we do try and appeal and still don't get anywhere... as it stands, the current house is dark, narrow and pokey - trying to get more than one person through the front door feels like playing Towers of Hanoi! The garden is absolutely fantastic and the extension would have given us the light and extra space we needed to comfortably have a family here and never leave. 

I know in the past people would have had families in small, pokey starter homes with a view to moving into a bigger house further down the line, but it's feeling like less and less of an option in recent years when housing prices have kept going up. The rungs on the property ladder have gotten further and further apart. Some of the places on the market in our area with similar features (i.e. gardens, distance to town centre/ public transport) that are a meaningful step up in terms of square footage are probably just barely within our reach but I don't want us stretched paper thin trying to repay our mortgage; we're trying to live within our means. Besides which, we love our neighbours/ street and the garden, we don't really want to sell and move if we can help it. 

I really feel for you, it sounds like it's been an utter nightmare on your end. In our limited experience, I'm inclined to agree that it's a hellscape.

Section62

Raindance25 said:

Section62 said:

Yes.  Appealing a planning application doesn't have to be expensive, but you need a decision from the council to appeal.  By withdrawing your application you'd now have to start from scratch again, albeit you could submit the same supporting documents...

The planner has to give a reasoned justification for their decision - so had you allowed the application to go to a formal decision you would know exactly what the reasons were, and could get a better idea if there were grounds to appeal.  It isn't surprising the planner was vague/non-committal in their feedback - this isn't a failing of the planner, rather them likely wanting to avoid saying anything which could undermine/contradict their final decision.  The days when you could phone up the case officer and have a friendly unofficial chat are more or less over.

Thanks for replying, it's all really useful stuff but I wanted to focus on these bits since I'm pretty ignorant of how planning applications work overall. We did have concerns that if we lost the appeal and had to give up and look at selling/ moving, having that on record might be something that put buyers off or affected the price. It may be the case that someone else would be perfectly happy with the existing footprint of the house or content to just extend within permitted development though, so is that a particularly realistic concern?

It would probably only affect the price if it was being marketed to people looking to buy a property to extend by the amount you wanted.  For people content with the property as it is then it shouldn't have an impact on the value.  For those who want a property they can extend then a refusal gives some degree of certainty about what would/wouldn't be acceptable.

A withdrawn application stays on the public record for the property, and generally people would read "withdrawn" as meaning "would have been refused".  If you go on to sell then your buyer is likely to find out you applied and withdrew the application, even if you opted not to tell them.

So in terms of a sale, a refusal and a withdrawal are likely to have more or less equal impacts.

Raindance25 said:

In particular the planner having to give a reasoned justification is what's throwing me. I don't understand why they've made it so difficult to get any information when their feedback really should be the same stuff that's going to be in the report, or is that not how it is? Completely agree, it's gutting that you can't just call up and talk things out a bit anymore, unfortunately the days of being able to do that were all before my time.

The reasoned justification is given when they make a formal decision.  This can be challenged - either by appeal or in court - so is done in a formal structured way to demonstrate that the decision maker has complied with the law and been 'Wednesbury reasonable' in coming to the decision they have.  

What the planner won't want is for anything they have said informally to be used against them in any appeal or court challenge.  Now that everyone has recording devices on and around them there's always a risk that an informal "I might be able to agree it if you did this..." gets quoted back at them in the appeal.